“Happiness” to some natures means more than to others. There are plants that cannot live without sunshine. Marion was one of these. Happiness to her meant capability of well-doing—life, strength, and heart to fill her place in the world and do her work. There are some few—the grandest of us all—to whom it is given bravely to endure to the end, with no hope on this side the grave; to do their task thoroughly, though it is all working in the dark with no prospect of light, save the far-off, fitful gleam that but seldom reaches the wearied eyes from across the depths of the dark river itself. But my poor child was not of these. She was strong, in a sense, stronger and deeper than most of her sex. But without some sunshine she must have withered and died. She felt instinctively that so it was with her; and there was more, far more, than the selfish cry of relief from pain, in her deep thankfulness for the light beginning again, as she thought, however feebly, to glimmer on her path. But as she was thinking thus, gazing out on the brightness and beauty around her, a shadow came between her and the sun, and the warmth and light flooding in through the narrow door of the rustic, close-thatched arbour, were suddenly intercepted. A dark figure stood before her. Her eyes were somewhat dazzled by the sunshine, and she did not for a moment see distinctly. The person—she could see it was a man—stood with his back to her. It was Ralph, of course. He was amusing himself with trying, from different points of view, to discover the fancied resemblance of the old yew in the centre of the green to a peacock with outspread tail. From where he now stood some weird resemblance of the kind was perceptible. The arbour was deep, and from the outside looked dark and cavernous. Utterly forgetful of the landlord’s mention of the young lady’s occupancy of it, he stood at the doorway unceremoniously blocking out the light: and when at last he turned and glanced inwards, he did not for an instant perceive that it was not tenantless. Then the flutter of a light dress revealed the presence of its owner. With a hasty exclamation of apology for his intrusion, Ralph was turning away, when a sound—what was it?—he could never tell—a cry of distress, an appeal to him by name, or only an inarticulate murmur—arrested him. The lady in the arbour stood up and approached him, gazing at him fixedly, shading her eyes with her hand from the glare of light surrounding him, as he hastily stepped forward to meet her. Something in her figure first struck him as familiar, something slight and indescribable, before he had time to look again at her face—to see the hand drop powerlessly by her side—and to recognize her he was on his way to seek—his lost love, Marion Vere!