"And yet you are dying to read it, all the while you are giving it away, my sweet wife; but give this copy to Lucy, and I will order another from town for you. Mabel has been talking of you, all the morning, my dear sir," he said, turning to Mr. Ware, "sending you, in imagination, the first papers, books, flowers, and fruit, and thinking how you will dream old times are come back again." "Hush," said Mabel, "those were all to be surprises." "Oh, I quite forgot that; but now you will be bound to carry your long dreams into reality; but one thing, remember, dear sir, that in all my wanderings, I have ever looked back, with the greatest regret, to the loss of your society, and I am selfishly anxious to secure as much of it now as possible." "If I am a welcome guest," replied the good Rector cheerfully, "you will no doubt very often find me a ready one, for, though we have lived in seclusion so many years, I have not lost my taste for that society, which a house like yours ought to afford; indeed, without my friend Mabel, I scarcely know how I should long have got on without it." "Thank you, thank you," returned Hargrave, "let me ever be the same to you as I was in sunny Italy, with no constraint between us, but that of self-respect; and now love," he said, turning to Mabel, "go and put on your bonnet, and we will shew our friends your beautiful Arab, and our intended improvements, and then we will walk to the village to see your two old servants; you had better go there at once, and then all fear of visiting the old place will be gone." Mabel's pretty straw bonnet was soon put on, and she was walking with them through the gardens and pleasure grounds, giving her own happy tone of feeling to every thing they looked upon; for wherever she stirred, there, life, and industry, and comfort were sure to appear. She was now the half idolized mistress of a wide domain, and more well stored wealth than she could afford time to calculate, and, wide as her influence was likely to extend, would she spread abroad the sun-light principles of her own pure heart. And, as she goes forth with Hargrave, leaning fondly on his arm, and bringing forward a hundred plans, which would call forth his energy, and bring a blessing on those around them--we will leave them, not sluggish and contented, as if the cares and exertions of life were ended, but happy in their restored love to begin it anew. THE END. T. C. Newby, Printer, 30, Welbeck Street, Cavendish Square. _In the Press._ TICONDEROGA: AN HISTORICAL ROMANCE, IN THREE VOLS. BY _G. P. R. JAMES, Esq._ HOPE: A STORY OF CHEQUERED LIFE. BY ALFRED W. COLE, Author of "The Cape and the Kaffirs," &c.