"Where? I didn’t hear any gate," Ellen replied, trembling lest she should betray what she had been forbidden to divulge. Had she confessed it then it would have saved her many a weary heartache, and her companion from many a thoughtless act, but she did not, and when Jessie, caressed her white cheek, and said laughingly, "Has my prudish Nell a secret love affair?" she made some incoherent answer, and, seeking her pillow, lived over again the scene in the garden, blushing to herself as she recalled the dark face which had bent so near to hers, and the tender voice which had whispered in her ear the name so recently given to her. "Little Snow-Drop," he called her when he bade her adieu, and the moon went down behind the mountain ere she fell asleep thinking of that name and the time when the forest tree would cast its leaf and he be with her again. CHAPTER V.—WALTER AND JESSIE. "So you won’t go with me," William said to Jessie, next morning, when she met him at the depot and gave him the note intended for her grandmother. "No," she replied. "The city is dull as yet, and I’d rather remain here with Ellen." "Oh, yes, Ellen," and William spoke quite indifferently. "Why didn’t she come to bid me good-by?" and he looked curiously at Jessie to see how much she knew. But Jessie suspected nothing, and replied at once: "She has a headache this morning and was still in bed when I left her." The heartless man was conscious of a pleasurable sensation,—a feeling of gratified vanity,—for he knew that headache was for him. But he merely said: "Tell her that I’m sorry she’s sick; she is a pleasant, quiet little girl, quite superior to country girls in general." "There’s the train," cried Jessie, and in a moment the cars rolled up before them. "It will seem a young eternity until you come home," said William, clasping Jessie’s hand. "Good-bye," he added, as "all aboard" was shouted in his ear, and as he turned away his place was taken by another, who had witnessed the parting between the two, and at whom Jessie looked wonderingly, exclaiming: "Why, Walter, I didn’t expect you to-day." "And shall I infer that I am the less welcome from that?" the young man asked, for with his inborn jealousy, which no amount of discipline could quite subdue, he thought he detected in Jessie’s tone and manner something cold and constrained. Nor was he wholly mistaken, for Jessie did not feel toward him just as she had done before. Still she greeted him cordially,—thought how handsome he was, and came pretty near telling him so,—but told him instead, that she thought he resembled his cousin William. This brought the conversation to a point Walter longed to reach, and as they walked slowly towards home he questioned her of William,—asking when he came, and if she had seen much of him previous to his visit there. "I saw him almost every day before he went to Europe," she replied. "You know he lives in New York now, and grandma thinks there’s nobody like him."