But on Ronald Valchester's love and happiness there fell no cloud from the near future. To his ardent and poetic imagination life lay before him fair and lovely like a dream of summer. Mr. Meredith came out and welcomed his niece's lover cordially, and after a brief conversation prudently retired into the house to the companionship of his wife and Dollie. Mrs. Meredith, persuaded into amiability for once in her life by her husband, spread a dainty and neat-looking supper upon the table. The lovers went through the form of eating, and then returned to the porch again where the air was spicy and sweet with the breath of late-blooming roses, and the new moon rose over the misty hills, smiling on these two lovers who were all the world to each other. "This time to-morrow night you will be my bride," Ronald said to her fondly. "Then we will immediately take the train for Richmond. Oh! Lina, how often I have dreamed of that home-going. Often and often when I think of taking you with me, I recall the beautiful words in which Longfellow describes the home going of Hiawatha and his bride. Do you remember, Lina?" She repeated a few lines softly: "Pleasant was the journey homeward, All the birds sang loud and sweetly Songs of happiness and heart's-ease; Sang the blue-bird, the Owaissa: 'Happy are you; Hiawatha, Having such a wife to love you!' Sang the robin, the Opechee: 'Happy are you, Minnehaha, Having such a noble husband!'" Then Lina's small hand stole softly into her lover's. She raised her dark, passionate eyes to his face, and he read in their starry depths the deathless love that filled her heart. "Lina, you do love me very much--do you not?" he said, lovingly. "Ah, I could not tell you how much," she murmured. "If I were a poet like you, Ronald, I might put my tenderness into glowing words. But it is locked deep within my heart. I think if anything happens to part us I should die." "Nothing _can_ happen to part us, Love," he answered. "To-morrow night at this hour you will belong to me wholly, and then your life shall be all _couleur de rose_. Nothing can come between us after that magic ring is on your finger. We shall belong to each other, then, in the solemn, beautiful words of the marriage service, 'until death us do part.'" His happy mood and his loving confidence were infectious. The girl forgot for awhile the hovering shadow of evil. She was gay and blithe and happy, looking forward to the morrow with timid, tremulous joy. "I shall come for you in a carriage to-morrow evening, myself," he said. "Walter Earle has promised to come for mother in his phaeton. Violet will meet us at the church." He kissed her good-night, saying that he would bring his mother to-morrow. "My last good-night," he said, as he held her small hands tightly a moment, loth to leave her, and smiling at the warm blushes that surged into her cheeks.