Flora held up her fresh pretty face to it, and caught the first drops upon her cheeks. "It is rather too cold," she said, shaking them off with a pretty graceful motion, and beginning to run like a young fawn. "I like to be caught in a spring shower; but oh, cousin Hester, what shall I do if I get my dress wet, I haven't another one till they send; and then, I am running and forgetting you. Don't run--_I_ don't care for being wet, if I may come down stairs in this frock after all. Oh! there is Mr. Southcote with a mantle for you, and an umbrella, and now I'll run all the way home." She passed him with a laughing exclamation as he came up. _She_ could not guess that this brief walk alone would be irksome to the young husband and wife, not four months married. I suffered him to wrap the mantle around me. I wondered almost to feel with what undiminished care he did it; and then we walked on side by side, in dreary silence, looking at the flying figure before us, with her mantle streaming behind her, and her fair curls escaping from the edge of her bonnet, as she turned round her laughing, glowing, pretty face to call and nod to us as she ran on. We did not speak to each other; we only looked at her, and plodded on slowly, side by side; and again the thought came upon me--and now, with a gush of pity for both of us, which overpowered me so that I could have thrown myself down there on the rainy roadside and cried. What a happy man _he_ would have been had he brought Flora Ennerdale, instead of Hester Southcote, to Cottiswoode, as his bride.