"I, at least, never heard that you were going to be married." "I!--married! Where is Miss Fitzhenry?" The concatenation of ideas presented by these words fell unremarked on the blunt senses of the good lady, and she replied, "In the shrubbery, I believe, or upstairs: she left me but a moment ago." Villiers hastened to the garden and soon discerned the tearful girl, who was bending down to pluck and arrange some flowers, so to hide her disturbed countenance. Could we, at the moment of trial, summon our reason and our foregone resolves--could we put the impression of the present moment at a distance, which, on the contrary, presses on us with a power as omnipotent over our soul, as a pointed sword piercing the flesh over our life, we might become all that we are not--angels or demigods, or any other being that is not human. As it is, the current of the blood and the texture of the brain are the machinery by which the soul acts, and their mechanism is by no means tractable or easily worked; once put in motion, we can seldom controul their operations; but our serener feelings are whirled into the vortex they create. Thus Edward Villiers had a thousand times in his reveries thought over the possibility of a scene occurring, such as the one he was called upon to act in now--and had planned a line of conduct, but, like mist before the wind, this gossamer of the mind was swept away by an immediate appeal to his heart through his outward sensations. There stood before him, in all her loveliness, the creature whose image had lived with him by day and by night, for several long months; and the gaze of her soft tearful eyes, and the faultering tone of her voice, were the laws to which his sense of prudence, of right, was immediately subjected. A few confused sentences interchanged, revealed to him that she participated in her aunt's mistake, and her simple question, "Why did you conceal this from me?" spoke the guilelessness of her thoughts, while the anguish which her countenance expressed, betrayed that the concealment was not the only source of her grief. This young pair were ignorant how dear they were to each other. Ethel's affection was that generous giving away of a young heart which is unaware of the value of the gift it makes--she had asked for and thought of no return, though her feeling was the result of a reciprocal one on his side; it was the instinctive love of the dawn of womanhood, subdued and refined by her gentle nature and imaginative mind. Edward was more alive to the nature of his own sentiments--but his knowledge stood him in no stead to fortify him against the power of Ethel's tears. In a moment they understood each other--one second sufficed to cause the before impervious veil to fall at their feet: they had stept beyond this common-place world, and stood beside each other in the new and mysterious region of which Love is emperor.