With this outburst she went away. Directly after, I saw one of the grooms riding down the road. Two hours after, he came back, and gave Lottie, who was waiting near the pine woods, with great appearance of secrecy, a note, with which she went at once to Mrs. Dennison, evidently resolved to keep up appearances, and leave her employers in the belief that the whole thing had been managed privately. I had thrown the subject of the note quite off my thoughts, when the groom, who had been to Mr. Bosworth's, came to me in the garden with distressing news. Poor young Bosworth was ill--so ill, that he had not been out of his room for some days; and his mother desired very much that I should come over and see him. He had spoken of it several times, and, now that he was growing worse, she could refuse him nothing. It was asking a great deal, but would I come at the earliest time possible? This was indeed sad news. I liked the young man. He was honorable, generous, and in all respects a person to fix one's affections upon--that is, such affections as a lady just dropping the bloom of her youth may bestow on the man who looks upon her as a sort of relative. Of course I would go to see Bosworth in his sickness. "God bless and help the young man," I whispered; "if she could only think of him as I do!" CHAPTER XXIV. THE OLD PENNSYLVANIA MANSION. The Bosworths lived behind the spur of the mountain which shut out a portion of the valley from our house by its crown of forest-trees. I had taken little exercise in the open air of late, for Mrs. Dennison monopolized the horse I had been in the habit of riding, with my usual seat in the carriage. Perhaps I felt a little hurt at this, and would not ask favors that had until now been mine without solicitation. In my love of out-door exercise I am half an English woman. So, mentioning to Mrs. Lee and Jessie that I was going out for a long walk across the fields, I started for Mrs. Bosworth's house. It was a splendid afternoon. The sunshine, warm and golden, without being oppressive, was softened by transparent clouds that drifted like currents and waves of gauze athwart the sky. The meadows were full of daisies, buttercups, and crimson clover, through which the blue-flies and bumble-bees fluttered and hummed their drowsy music. In the pastures clouds of grasshoppers sprang up, with a whir, from the clusters of white everlasting that sprinkled the slopes like a snow-storm; and little birds bent down the stately mullein-stalks with their weight, and sang cheerily after me from the crooks of the fences.