seen and watched from the first, with keen interest, all the movements of the other, whom, at length, he seemed to recognize, with recollections which caused him to recoil, and his whole countenance to contract and darken with angry and disquieting emotions. He was not allowed much time, however, for indulging his disturbed feelings; for scarcely had the object of his annoyance disappeared, before his attention was attracted by a slight rustling sound somewhere within the garden; when, turning his head, the frown that had gathered on his brow suddenly gave place to a look of joyful animation, as his eager eye caught a glimpse of the light, fluttering drapery of a female, who, with soft, rapid tread, was gliding along the outer edge of the screening shrubbery towards him. The next instant he was at her side, ardently grasping her half-proffered hand, and tenderly gazing into her sweetly-confused countenance. “How grateful,” he began, after a broken salutation--“how grateful I should be for this obliging attention to the note I sent you, soliciting a meeting which--” “Which my gallant preserver of old will be pretty sure to misconstrue, I fear me,” interrupted the maiden, with a half-murmured, sportive laugh. “No, Miss Haviland,” he replied, too intent on a serious demonstration of his feelings to respond in the same spirit--“no, I am not so presuming; nor do I wish to count on the former service, which you so magnify, and which has induced you, perhaps, to grant this interview.” “In part, I confess,” was the answer to this implied question. “I suspected--I feared so,” he rejoined, despondingly. “Would to Heaven you could have acted entirely aside from that motive, and then I might have found cause to hope. But now,” he added, with suppressed emotion--“now--But O, how can I harbor the chilling thought of being doomed to love without a return! Say, fairest and best, must this indeed be so?” The downcast look and the quick-heaving bosom were the only reply; and the impassioned lover, gathering courage even from these uncertain indications, proceeded:--