Hush, they are coming home--seeing nothing but an indefinite splendour in the earth and in the sky--sweet in the dews of their youth--touched to the heart--to that very depth and centre where lie all ecstasies and tears. Walking together arm in arm, in their young humility--scarcely aware of the bridal train behind them--in an enchantment of their own; now coming back to that old little room, with its pensive old memories of hermit life and solitude--this quiet old place, which never before was lighted up with such a gleam of splendid fortune and happy hope. You would say it was Marian Atheling, “with the smile on her lip, and the tear in her eye”--the very same lovely vision whom the lad Louis saw some eighteen months ago at the garden gate. But you would be mistaken; for it is not Marian--it is the young Lady Winterbourne. This one is quite as beautiful for a consolation--almost more so in her bridal blush, and sunshine, and tears--and for a whole hour by the village clock has been a peeress of the realm. This is what it has come to, after all--what they must all come to, those innocent young people--even Rachel, who is as wild as a child, in her first genuine and unalarmed outburst of youthful jubilation--even Agnes, who through all this joy carries a certain thoughtful remembrance in her dark eyes--possibly even Charlie, who fears no man, but is a little shy of every womankind younger than Miss Anastasia. There are only one or two strangers; but the party almost overflows Miss Bridget’s parlour, where the old walls smile with flowers, and the old apartment, like an ancient handmaid, receives them with a prim and antique grace--a little doubtful, yet half hysterical with joy. But it does not last very long, this crowning festival. By-and-by the hero and the heroine go away; then the guests one by one; then the family, a little languid, a little moved with the first inroad among them, disperse to their own apartments, or to a meditative ramble out of doors; and when the twilight falls, you could almost suppose Miss Bridget, musing too over the story of another generation, sitting before the fire in her great old chair, with no companion but the flowers.