The shadows of gently-undulating branches and the delicate traceries of the feather-grass--so subtly sensitive that in the stillest night its bells are tremulous; mayhap in response to fairy whisperings--are reflected in the stream which reflects also the shadow of Nelly Marston, who is bending low to look at her fair face in the depths made luminous by stars. As with sparkling eyes she stoops lower and lower in half-sportive, half-earnest admiration of herself, her face rises in the water to greet her, until the smiling lips of flesh almost kiss their shadow. As she gazes, another shadow bends over hers, blotting the fairer vision, and a strong arm is thrown around her waist. "Why, Nelly--Miss Marston! Are you about to play Ophelia in my aunt's pretty brook?" The girl starts to her feet, and swiftly releases herself from his embrace. Not far from them, but unseen by either, stands the gardener's son, watching them. _Their_ breasts are stirred by emotions which bring an agitated pleasure to them; _his_ is stirred by darker passions. "I was simply," replies Nelly, with burning blushes in her face, "bending over the water to--to----" And pauses for lack of words. Mr. Temple assists her. "To look at your pretty face, or perhaps to kiss yourself, as a spirit might. Labour thrown away, Miss Marston, and most certainly unprofitable, if what the poet says is true: "Some there be that shadows kiss; Such have but a shadow's bliss." Nelly Marston regains her composure. "We did not expect you to-night, Mr. Temple." "Then I should be all the more welcome," he answers gaily. "I am starving, Nelly----" She checks him by a look. "I beg your pardon. Miss Nelly Marston, I am starving with hunger. I have not had a morsel of food in my mouth since the morning." "There will be no difficulty in reviving your fainting soul, Mr. Temple," she says, with a desperate attempt to imitate his light manner; "but Lady Temple must not know you are here. 'Miss Marston,' she said to me this afternoon, my nephew will be absent for some time. He will write to me regularly. Directly his letters arrive, let me have them. If I am asleep place them at once by my side.'" Mr. Temple, a handsome, graceful man, not less than thirty-five years of age, interposes with a merry laugh. "I posted one to her ladyship three hours ago, twenty miles from this spot." "All the more reason," says Nelly Marston seriously, "why she should not know you are in Springfield." He tries to stop her remonstrance by, "Now, my dear Mother Hubbard!" but she will not listen to him. "Lady Temple unfortunately magnifies the smallest trifles into serious vexations. She is very, very fretful"--this with a little weary sigh--"and the doctor says it is most important she should not be annoyed in any way. Mr. Temple, if she suspects you are in the house to-night, she will never forgive you."