The muddy garden, with its patches of snow, its forlorn and neglected air, its spreading vines and the thickly standing stalks of last year's weeds, was even less inviting. Edith had never seen the country in winter, and the gardens of her experience were full of green, beautiful life. The orchard looked not only gaunt and bare, but very untidy. The previous year had been most abundant in fruit, and the trees were left to bear at will. Therefore many of the limbs were wholly or partly broken off, and lay scattered where they fell, or still hung by a little of the woody fibre and bark. Edith came back to the fire from the survey of her future home, not only chilled in body by the raw April winds, but more chilled in heart. Though she had not expected summer greenness and a sweet inviting home, yet the reality was so dreary and forbidding, from its necessary contrast with the past, that she sank down on the floor, and buried her head in her lap in an uncontrollable passion of grief. Hannibal was out gathering wood to replenish the fire, and it was a luxury to be alone a few minutes with her sorrow. But soon she had the consciousness that she was not alone, and looking up, saw Arden in the door, with a grave troubled face. Hastily turning from him, and wiping away her tears, she said rather coldly: "You should have knocked. The house is my home, if it is empty." His face changed instantly to its usual hard sullen aspect, and he said briefly: "I did knock." "The landlady has told her all about us," he thought, "and she rejects sympathy and fellowship from such as we are." But Edith's feeling had only been annoyance that a stranger had seen her emotion, so she said quickly, "I beg your pardon. We have had trouble, but I don't give way in this manner often. Have you brought a load?" "Yes. If your servant will help me I will bring the things in." As he and Hannibal carried in heavy rolls of carpet and other articles, Edith removed as far as possible the traces of her grief, and soon began to scan by the light of day with some curiosity her acquaintance of the previous evening. He was the very opposite to herself in appearance. Her eyes were large and dark. He had a rather small but piercing blue eye. His locks were light and curly, and his beard sandy. Her hair was brown and straight. He was fully six feet tall, while she was only of medium height. And yet Edith was not a brunette, but possessed a complexion of transparent delicacy which gave her the fragile appearance characteristic of so many American girls. His face was much tamed by exposure to March winds, but his brow was as white as hers. In his morbid tendency to shun every one, he usually kept his eyes fixed on the ground so as to appear not to see people, and this, with his habitual frown, gave a rather heavy and repelling expression to his face. "He would make a very good representative of the laboring classes," she thought, "if he hadn't so disagreeable an expression."