It was a day of cloudless sunshine when Morton set forth for the house at Battle Brook; but his mind was far from sharing the brightness of the world without. The hope that flowed so full and calmly the night before had ebbed and left him dry. He was shaken with doubts, misgivings, perturbations. He walked his horse up the avenue, till he came within view of the house, a large, square mansion, with a veranda on three sides, a quiet-looking place enough, but in Morton's eyes priceless as Aladdin's palace, and sacred as Our Lady's house at Loretto. A monthly honeysuckle twined about one of the columns of the porch; the hall door stood open, and the air played freely through from front to rear. He gave his horse to the charge of an old Scotchman who was mowing the lawn, rang at the door, asked for Miss Leslie, and was shown into the vacant parlor. With its straw carpeting and light summer furniture, it was bright and cheerful as every thing else about it. Engravings from Turner and Landseer, framed in black walnut, hung against the walls; and on a small table in a corner stood a bird cage, with the door left purposely open. The inmate was hopping about the room, without attempting to escape, though the windows also were open. "No wonder it will not leave her," thought the visitor. He seated himself by the window, and looked out on the fields and the groves beyond. Far down in the meadow, the yellow-tufted rye was undulating in the warm summer wind, wave chasing wave in graceful succession. The birds would not sing,--the afternoon was too hot,--but the buzz, and hum, and chirrup of a myriad of insects rose from their lurking-places in the grass, while now and then the cicala raised its piercing voice from a neighboring apple tree. Suddenly Morton's heart began to beat; a light step on the staircase reached his ear, and the rustling of a dress. Miss Leslie came in with her usual natural and quiet ease of manner, while he rose to receive her with his heart in his throat. And now, when he needed them most, his wits seemed to fail him. He tried to converse, and produced nothing but barren commonplace. Again and again the conversation flagged; and the hum and chirrup of the insect world without filled the pauses between. He glanced at his companion. "Be a man, you idiot," he apostrophized himself. He looked at her again, as she bent over the embroidery with which her fingers were employed. "I must speak out, or die," he thought. He rested his arm on the table. He leaned towards her. Heaven knows what nonsense was on his lips, when the sound of a man's footstep in the hall made him subside into his chair, and do his best to look nonchalant. Leslie entered, cast an uneasy glance at the visitor, and greeted him with somewhat cool courtesy. "I have just met Miss Weston and her sister," said Leslie to his daughter; "I think they will be here in a few minutes." Morton looked at a Landseer on the wall, and gnawed his lip with vexation.