Three blissful days of sunshine, meadowy rambles, forest explorations, the majestic tranquillity of Nature spiced with the sauce of flirtation, or something stronger. Sometimes we took our morning happiness on foot, sometimes our mid-day ecstasy served up on horseback, sometimes our evening rapture in an open wagon at two forty. The puerile Tarlingford, interfering at first, was summarily crushed. Aspiring to equestrian distinctions, he wrought upon maternal indulgence, until, not without misgivings, maternal anxiety was stifled, and, with injunctions that we should hover protectingly near him, he was sent forth, a thorn in our sides. In half an hour he was accidentally remembered, and was found to be nowhere within view; so we pursued our way, well pleased. He had dropped quietly off, at the first canter, into a miry slough, and had returned sobbingly, covered with mortification and mud, to the arms of his parent. Keen questioning at dinner was the result. "Why did you so neglect him?" demanded fond mamma, adding, reproachfully, "The child's life might have been sacrificed." "Mother, we looked for him, and he was gone. Why didn't he cry out?" "So I did," shouted this youth of open speech; "but you two had your heads together, laughing and talking like anything, and couldn't hear, I suppose." (With a juvenile sneer.) "Oh, fie, Walter! Now I think you were so frightened that you could not speak." "I shall know better than to intrust him to your care again," said indignant mamma, as one who withdrew a blessed privilege. "Don't say that, mother; it would be a punishment too severe," said the mischievous little pale sister, in tones of pity, and her face brimming with mirth. Everybody laughed, and peace was restored. On the third evening, misery came to me in an envelope post-marked New York:-- "My DEAR PLOVINS:-- "I shall be with you the night after you receive this. Engage a room for me. Have you seen anything of a Miss Tarlingford, where you are staying? You should know her. She is very brilliant and accomplished, but is retiring. I am willing to tell you, but it must go no farther, that we are betrothed. "Yours, in a hurry, "FRANK LILLIVAN." My heart was as the mercury of a thermometer which is plunged into ice; but I preserved an outward composure. Turning over the pile of letters awaiting owners, I came upon one, directed in Lillivan's handwriting, to Miss A. Tarlingford, etc., etc. To think that a paltry superscription should carry such a weight of tribulation with it! I thus discovered that my lines had fallen in unpleasant places. I was fishing in a preoccupied stream, and had got myself entangled. I avoided the public table, and shrunk from society. During the whole of the next morning, I kept aloof from the temptations of Tarlingford, and took to billiards.