The wrong knight only came in as a rival to make some complications in the story, as Susan read it; and somehow the girl adopted the tale by intuition, and fell into a vague delight of innocent dreams. Pursuing these at her needlework, after all her novels were exhausted, was almost as good as another romance; and this tale spun itself on inexhaustibly, a story without an end. This spring in Susan's fresh heart developed itself unawares in her actions and life. She went about the house with a more sprightly step; she caught up Peggy's snatches of song, and kept humming and murmuring them, without knowing it. Sometimes her hands fell idle on her lap, as her new thoughts rose. Often she went out upon solitary rambles, with this pleasant companionship in her heart. It would not be right to say she was bolder, for the contrary was the case--she was shyer, more ready to shrink from any person whom she met; but somehow found a vague, delightful expectation, which gave a charm to everything diffused over her life. A few days after she received Uncle Edward's letter, Susan had the good fortune to meet her friend Letty, her sole acquaintance--her secret intercourse with whom she had tremblingly revealed to the Colonel. Letty was delicate, and had not been permitted to be out of doors during the bad weather. She was a tall, meagre girl, who had outgrown her strength, and whose sallow cheeks, and prominent light gray eyes, made the greatest contrast possible to Susan's blooming health and simple beauty. Letty was supposed to have received a wonderful education: she could play on the piano, and draw, and speak French--achievements which, in Peggy's opinion, made her a most desirable companion for poor Susan, who was ignorant of all these fine things. Besides her accomplishments, Letty was very sentimental, and wrote verses, and took rather a pathetic view of things in general. Her great misfortune was that in her own person she had nothing to complain of. She was the only child of her parents, who petted and humoured her, as old people are apt to do to the child of their old age, and who were correspondingly proud of her acquirements. Consequently, to her own great disgust, she did very much as she liked, and was contradicted by nobody. She threw herself, with all the greater fervour of sympathy, into the circumstances of her friend, not without a little envy of Susan's trials, and splendid imaginations, had she been in the same position, of what she should have done. After this long separation she flew upon Susan, throwing her long arms round her friend's neck with enthusiasm. Then the two, with arms interlaced, strayed along by the side of the high hedgerow in the winterly sunshine--the young buds opening out on the branches against which they brushed in passing, and the young grass rustling under their feet. There was not a single passenger on the road as far as they could see. They were free to exchange their friendly confidence, without the