Again life lies open, as it did once before; but the regrets, disappointments, and fruitless resolves do not come to trouble me now. It is the future, which has become as level as the sea; and _she_ is beside me—the sharer in that future—to look out with me upon the joyous sparkle of water, and to count with me the dazzling ripples that lie between us and the shore. A thousand pleasant plans come up, and are abandoned, like the waves we leave behind us; a thousand other joyous plans dawn upon our fancy, like the waves that glitter before us. We talk of Laurence and his bride, whom we are to meet; we talk of her mother, who is even now watching the winds that waft her child over the ocean; we talk of the kindly old man, her god-father, who gave her a father’s blessing; we talk low, and in the twilight hours, of Isabel—who sleeps. At length, as the sun goes down upon a fair night, over the western waters which we have passed, we see before us the low blue line of the shores of Cornwall and Devon. In the night shadowy ships glide past us with gleaming lanterns; and in the morning we see the yellow cliffs of the Isle of Wight; and standing out from the land is the dingy sail of our pilot. London with its fog, roar, and crowds, has not the same charms that it once had; that roar and crowd is good to make a man forget his griefs—forget himself, and stupefy him with amazement. We are in no need of such forgetfulness. We roll along the banks of the sylvan river that glides by Hampton Court; and we toil up Richmond Hill, to look together upon that scene of water and meadow—of leafy copses and glistening villas, of brown cottages and clustered hamlets—of solitary oaks and loitering herds—all spread like a veil of beauty upon the bosom of the Thames. But we can not linger here, nor even under the glorious old boles of Windsor Forest; but we hurry on to that sweet county of Devon, made green with its white skeins of water. Again we loiter under the oaks, where we have loitered before; and the sleek deer gaze on us with their liquid eyes as they gazed before. The squirrels sport among the boughs as fearless as ever; and some wandering puss pricks her long ears at our steps and bounds off along the hedgerows to her burrow. Again I see Carry in her velvet riding-cap, with the white plume; and I meet, as I met her before, under the princely trees that skirt the northern avenue. I recall the evening when I sauntered out at the park gates, and gained a blessing from the porter’s wife, and dreamed that strange dream—now, the dream seems more real than my life. “God bless you!” said the woman again. —“Ay, old lady, God has blessed me!”—and I fling her a guinea, not as a gift, but as a debt.