“Why?” Amélie solved the query as every true woman does, who asks herself why she loves one man rather than another. “Because he has chosen me out in preference to all others, to be the treasure-keeper of his affections! I am proud,” continued Amélie, “that he gives his love to me, to me! unworthy as I am of such preference. I am no better than others.” Amélie was a true woman: proud as an empress before other men, she was humble and lowly as the Madonna in the presence of him whom she felt was, by right of love, lord and master of her affections. Amélie could not overcome a feeling of tremor in the presence of Pierre since she made this discovery. Her cheek warmed with an incipient flush when his ardent eyes glanced at her too eloquently. She knew what was in his heart, and once or twice, when casually alone with Philibert, she saw his lips quivering under a hard restraint to keep in the words, the dear words, she thought, which would one day burst forth in a flood of passionate eloquence, overwhelming all denial, and make her his own forever. Time and tide, which come to all once in our lives, as the poet says, and which must be taken at their flood to lead to fortune, came at length to Amélie de Repentigny. It came suddenly and in an unlooked-for hour, the great question of questions to her as to every woman. The hour of birth and the hour of death are in God's hand, but the hour when a woman, yielding to the strong enfolding arm of a man who loves her, falters forth an avowal of her love, and plights her troth, and vows to be one with him till death, God leaves that question to be decided by her own heart. His blessing rests upon her choice, if pure love guides and reason enlightens affection. His curse infallibly follows every faithless pledge where no heart is, every union that is not the marriage of love and truth. These alone can be married, and where these are absent there is no marriage at all in the face of Heaven, and but the simulation of one on earth, an unequal yoking, which, if man will not sunder, God will at last, where there is neither marriage nor giving in marriage, but all are as his angels. The day appointed for the long-planned excursion to the beautiful Lake of Tilly came round. A numerous and cheerful water-party left the Manor House in the bright, cool morning to spend the day gipsying in the shady woods and quiet recesses of the little lake. They were all there: Amélie's invitation to her young friends far and near had been eagerly accepted. Half a dozen boats and canoes, filled with light-hearted companions and with ample provisions for the day, shot up the narrow river, and after a rapid and merry voyage, disembarked their passengers and were drawn up on the shores and islands of the lake.