At this moment the garden gate was heard to creak upon its hinges, (most unmusically to Bacon's ears,) and Harriet Harrison came tripping over beds and flowers, all out of breath, her cheeks glowing with the heightened colour of exercise, and her eyes sparkling with mischief just ready to explode. "Oh, Virginia! Virginia! such news!" was her first exclamation; "But shall I tell it before Mr. Bacon?" "Yes, if it is of the usual kind." "Well, upon your own head be the consequences. I have accidentally overheard such a secret! You must know that your Aunt Berkley has been at our house this morning, and I overheard her tell my mother that there was to be a great wedding immediately, and that I was to be one of the brides-maids. What! no tell-tale guilty blush? Well, who do you think is to be the bride-groom, and who the bride?" "Indeed, Harriet, I cannot even guess." "The blissful man, then is Beverly--but can you name his bride?" "I should not go far hence for an answer, if you had not announced your nomination for a secondary office." "O fie, fie, Virginia, I did not think you could play the hypocrite so well. I will tell you who it is then, but you must not breathe it even to the winds, nor you, Mr. Bacon. It is a sly arch little damsel, about your age and figure; by name Virginia Fairfax!" And with, these words, she burst into a loud laugh, pointing to her companion with her finger, and then tripped away again towards the gate without waiting to see the effect of her communication; but stopping with the gate in her hand, she cried--"But remember, Virginia, Charles Dudley is not to stand up with me; we don't speak now." And then she flew away, her hat hanging by the riband round her neck, and her raven ringlets flying loose around her temples. Virginia sat as one without life or motion, her face deadly pale, and her eye preternaturally clear and glassy, but without a tear. Her respiration was hurried and oppressed, and her countenance expressive of high and noble resolves in the midst of the keenest mental suffering. She knew whence her aunt obtained her information, and in its communication to others in the confidence of the Governor, before she had been consulted, she saw the tyrannical determination of that arbitrary old man to consummate this hated union without the least regard to her wishes or her feelings.