"I do not think you know what I will say, dearest," I replied, walking by her side towards the door. "I may have much more to say than you can even guess; but let us go out; I prefer the free air, too, my beloved. Under the clear sky, one feels in the presence of a purer power; and with the great trust you have placed in me, I should wish to deal as if the eye of God were visibly fixed on me the whole time." We went forth together, passed across the little open space, and wandered on a short distance into the wood to a spot where we could see the cleared part of the plantation without being quite hidden from the house. We there seated ourselves in the shade, though a ray of the early sun stole through between the trunks of the old giants, and crossed with a gleam of golden light Bessy's tiny foot and delicate ankle. She laid the bundle of old letters upon my knee, and was apparently about to speak of them; but I forestalled her, taking her dear hand in mine, and holding it there. "Bessy," I said, "these have been four eventful days--ay, and four eventful months to both you and me." "They have, indeed!" she answered with a sigh. "Have you remarked," I continued, "how fortune has seemed to take a pleasure in binding our fates together link after link in a chain that cannot be broken? How, from the first, event after event drew us nearer and nearer to each other, as if to sport with all your cold resolves, and with my unreasonable expectation?" "It would seem so, truly," she answered, gazing down on the grass in thought. "Let us recapitulate, my beloved," I said, "before we go farther. Here, to begin with myself, in man's true egotistical spirit, as you would have said not long ago,--I came to this country, without ever dreaming that I should find any one to excite anything in my heart beyond a passing feeling of admiration. I had made no resolves; but I had gone through many years and scenes, without ever seeing a woman I could wish to make my wife--without seeing any one to love, in short." "And to fall in love, at length, with a wild Virginian girl, quite unworthy of you!" said Bessy, looking up with one of her old bright smiles. "Nay," I answered, "to find a treasure where I least expected it. But let us go on----" "Ay, but you have not added, dear Richard," she said, still smiling, "that you did not think it at all a treasure when you found it first." "Perhaps I did not recognize its full value," I replied; "but I soon found it out when I came to see it nearer."