Yes! there was the dim garden underneath, with the trees rising up solemnly in the pale summer night, and all the color and the light gone out of this flowery little world. There were the lights in the little gleaming windows of Corpus like so many old friends smiling at me. I had come home to my own familiar room; but I was not the same Hester Southcote, who had lived all her life in this environment. In my heart, I brought another with me into my girlish bower. The idea of him possessed all my thoughts--his words came rushing back, I think almost every one of them, into my ears. I dropped upon my seat with the shawl he had placed there still upon me, without removing my bonnet or doing anything. I sat down and began to live it over again, all this magical night. It stood in my memory like a picture, so strange, so beautiful, so true! could it be true? Did he think me the first, above all others? and all these words which sent the blood tingling to the very fingers he had clasped, had he really spoken them, and I listened? and all this wonderful time had been since I left the little dark room, where I had even now again to look at my altered fate. All the years before were nothing to this single night. And then I remembered where he was, and how occupied now. He was telling my father--asking my father to give up his only child. My father was ill--in danger of his life--and was I willing to leave him alone? but then the proud thought returned to me--not to leave him alone--to add to him a better companion than I, a friend, a son, a man of nature as lofty as himself; but I was not willing to enter into details, and as I thought upon the interview going on so near me, I grew nervous once more. Then I heard a step softly approaching my door. Then a light gleamed through it, and I went to open it with a great tremor. It was Alice, with a light, and she said my father had sent for me to come to him now. Alice did not ask me why I sat in the dark with my bonnet on; instead of that she helped to take off my walking dress, and kept her eyes from my face, in her kindness--for she must have seen how the color went and came, how I trembled, and how much agitated I was. She brushed back my hair with her own kind hands, and took a rose out of a vase on the table, and fastened it in my dress. I had been so full of my own thoughts, that I had not observed these roses, but I knew at once when she did this. They were from my own tree at Cottiswoode. I did not ask Alice how she got them, yet I had pleasure in the flower. It reminded me of my mother--my mother--if I had a mother now!