I did trust to him with gratitude, and a feeling of relief. He walked home with me, moderating my pace, and leading my mind to ordinary subjects. He was very kind to me. He said nothing to embarrass or distress; but calmed my excitement, and made me feel a real confidence in him. When we got home, nothing had happened. The quiet house was as quiet and undisturbed as ever it had been. Mr. Osborne went to the library; and I went up-stairs to the window-seat in the drawing-room. And I do not venture to say that I did not go back to my dreams. THE EIGHTH DAY. Alice had sent me out to walk at sunset--she said I was breaking her heart with my white thin face, and woful looks. I had spent all that afternoon in the garden watching my father at his window. I could do little else but watch him, and listen, and wait near the library; the constant strain of anxiety almost wore me out; yet I had a fond persuasion at the bottom of my heart, that my fears were groundless, and I think I almost kept up my anxiety on purpose as a sort of veil for this hope. Since I had been so much afraid for him, he seemed to have grown better every day--he had begun to take his walks again, and had never had another attack since the time Alice warned me how ill he was. I obeyed her now tacitly and went out; though it was a beautiful night, few people were walking when I went to walk by the river side, where the last rays of the sun were shining gloriously through the half transparent leaves of the lime-trees. The tender slanting golden light was very sweet to see, as it touched upon the green surface of the lawn at some single ripple or eddy, and left all beside in the deep shadow of the coming twilight. In those great trees overhead, the wind was sighing with a gentle rustle, shaking the leaves against each other, swaying the sunny branches into the shade, and thrusting now and then a dark parcel of leaves into the sunshine, when they suddenly became illuminated and showed you all the life in their delicate veins, quivering against the light. On the one bank of the river was a trim slope of grass descending to the water, and on the other, withdrawn over broad lawns of greensward, with shadows of trees lying on the grass, and the light falling on it aslant and tardily, stood the stately College buildings, noble and calm in the sweet leisure of the evening rest. I came here because I saw it solitary; no one interrupted me as I wandered along the broad sandy footpath; no one disturbed my thoughts as I pursued my dream. Sometimes a bird fluttered through the leaves from one branch to another, going home; and there was a low sweet twittering of welcome from the tiny household deep in the heart of the green lime, a forest all bedewed and shining with the last smiles of the sun; but I heard no other sound except my own footsteps, at which I sometimes could almost have blushed and stepped aside, afraid of some spectator of my maiden