One evening, Olivia and some of the party remained at home, the carriage being fully occupied without them. Off drove Mr. and Mrs. Hearty, and a whole posse of friends and visitors, to take their usual round by Chepauk and the Fort; kissing hands to Olivia and one or two others, who stood on the terrace to see them depart. They were no sooner gone than I proceeded to enjoy my accustomed saunter in the coco-nut grove, at the back of the house. There was a delicious tranquillity in the hour which produced a soothing effect on my feelings. The sun had just dipped his broad orb in the ocean, and his parting beams suffused with a ruddy warmth the truly Oriental scene around. Flocks of paroquets, screaming with delight, were wheeling homewards their rapid flight; the creak of the well-wheel, an Indian rural sound, came wafted from distant fields, and the ring-doves were uttering their plaintive cooings from amidst the shady bowers of the neighbouring garden— The air, a chartered libertine, was still. I walked and mused, gazing around on the animated scenes of nature, which always delight me, when suddenly one of the most charming of all her works, a beautiful girl, appeared before me. It was Olivia, who met me (undesignedly of course) at a turn of the avenue. She appeared absorbed in a book, which, on hearing my steps, she suddenly closed, and with a blush, which caused the eloquent blood to mount responsive in my cheeks, she exclaimed. “Oh, Mr. Gernon, is this you? Your servant, sir! (courtesying half-coquettishly); who would have expected to meet you here all alone, and so solemnly musing?” “Is there any thing more extraordinary in it, Miss Olivia,” said I, “than to find you also alone, and enjoying your intellectual repast, ‘under the shade of melancholy boughs?’ The Chinese, I believe, think that human hearts are united from birth by unseen silken cords, which contracting slowly but surely, bring them together at last. What think you, Olivia?” I continued (we grow familiar generally on the eve of a declaration), “may not some such invisible means of attraction have brought us together at this moment?” Olivia looked down, her pretty little foot being busily engaged in investigating the character of a pebble, or something of the sort, that lay on the walk, and indistinctly replied, that she had really never much considered such weighty and mysterious subjects, but that it might be even so. Encouraged by this reply, yet trembling at the thought of my own audacity (bullets whizzing past me since have not produced half the trepidation), I placed myself near her, and gently taking the little, soft, white hand which listlessly, but invitingly, hung by her side, I said (I was sorely puzzled what to say), “I—I—was delighted, dear Olivia, to find you a visitor here on my arrival the other day.”