Surrounded by these and myriad other evidences of spring, stands a fair and beautiful girl, herself in the spring of life. The name of the place is appropriate to her and to the season. Springfield is an enclosed park of forty acres, the beauties of which are jealously hidden from vulgar gaze. It is the most picturesque portion of an important estate, at present in the possession of Lady Josephine Temple, who lies sick in the quaint old house yonder, built in the Elizabethan style, the designs for which are said to have been prepared by John of Padua. But John of Padua and all the historical associations of the house are as dead letters to Lady Temple, who has sufficient food for contemplation in her own immediate affairs and condition. The blinds of the room in which she lies are drawn down for the express purpose of shutting out the day, in accordance with the ancient formula, which provided that the sick should be depressed and weakened by dim light and silence, instead of cheered and strengthened by sunlight and cheerfulness. To beautiful Nelly Marston, as she stands by the quaint old windows in the laughing sunlight, with diamond drops of rain glistening in her bonny brown hair, and on her lashes,-- "The April in her eyes; it is love's spring, And these the showers to bring it on,"-- to her comes, with a bashful air upon him, the son of the head gardener of Springfield, a young man of twenty-five or thereabouts, fairly handsome, fairly well-made, and, through the long services of his father, fairly well-to-do in the world. He has in his hand some loose flowers, and a small bouquet of lilies of the valley, arranged in good taste, and looking, with their white petals and their background of exquisitely green leaves, like turrets of ivory carved out one above another, built up on emerald mountains. The young man, with a world of admiration expressed in his manner, holds out the lilies to Miss Nelly Marston, with a shyness that would have been comical in one so strong had his earnestness allowed scope for any quality less strong than itself. "May I offer you these, miss?" As though he were offering her his heart, which, indeed, he was ready and eager to do, but lacked the courage. "Thank you, John," she says, turning the flowers this way and that, with as dainty a coquetting with man and flower--though she does not look at _him_--as well could be. Then she selects two or three of the lilies, and places them in her brown hair, where they rest like white doves in an autumn forest. John's heart is full as he sees his flowers thus disposed. Nelly, then, inhales the fresh air, demonstratively, as though it were nectar. "What a lovely morning! And yet it was blowing last night, almost like winter."