For a long time Lily had no doubt on this point. She began to speak again about the term and the upper story in the old town. “But I would like the other better now,” she said; “it would be better air for----, and more easy to get out to country walks and all that is needed for health and thriving.” It had been an uncomfortable sensation to Ronald when she had renounced all the talk and anticipation of the house to be taken at the term. But now that he was accustomed to exemption from troublesome enquiries on that point he felt angry to have it taken up again. He was disposed to think that she did it only to annoy him, at a time, too, when he was setting his brain to work to think and to plan how the difficulties could be got over, and how in the most satisfactory way, and with the least trouble to her, every thing could be arranged for Lily’s comfort. But he did not betray himself; he took great pains even to calm all inquietudes, and not to irritate her or excite her nerves (as he said) by opposition. He tried, indeed, to represent mildly that of all country walks and good air nothing could be so good as the breeze over the moors and the quiet ways about, where every thing delicate and feeble must drink in life. But Lily had confronted him with a blaze in her eyes, declaring that such a thing was not possible, not possible! in a tone which she had never taken before. He said nothing more at that time. He made believe even, when Whit-Sunday returned, that he had seen a house, which he described in detail, but did not commit himself to say he had secured it. Into this trap Lily fell very easily. She had all the rooms, the views from the windows, the arrangement of the apartment described to her over and over again, and for the great part of that second summer of her married life there was no drawback to the blessedness of her life. She spent it in a delightful dream, taking her little sober walks like a woman of advanced experience, no longer springing from hummock to hummock like a silly girl about the moor, taking in, in exquisite calm, all its sounds and scents and pictures to her very heart. In the height of the summer days, when the air was full of the hum of the bees, Lily would sit under the thin shade of a rowan-tree, thinking about nothing, the air and the murmur which was one with the air filling her every consciousness. Why should she have sought a deeper shadow. She wanted no shadow, but basked in the warm shining of the sun, and breathed that dreamy hum of life, and watched, without knowing it, the drama among the clouds, shadows flitting like breath as swift and sudden, coming and going upon the hills. All was life all through, constant movement, constant sound, alternation and change, no need of thinking, foreseeing, fore-arranging, but the great universe swaying softly in the infinite realm of space, and God holding all--the bees, the flickering rowan-leaves, the shadows and the mountains and