"Ah! You make the most of it, I know," cried Louisa, "but if it were
really so, I should do just the same in her place. If I loved a man,
as she loves the Admiral, I would always be with him, nothing should ever
separate us, and I would rather be overturned by him, than driven safely
by anybody else."

It was spoken with enthusiasm.

"Had you?" cried he, catching the same tone; "I honour you!"
And there was silence between them for a little while.

Anne could not immediately fall into a quotation again. The sweet scenes
of autumn were for a while put by, unless some tender sonnet,
fraught with the apt analogy of the declining year, with declining
happiness, and the images of youth and hope, and spring, all gone together,
blessed her memory. She roused herself to say, as they struck by order
into another path, "Is not this one of the ways to Winthrop?"
But nobody heard, or, at least, nobody answered her.

Winthrop, however, or its environs--for young men are, sometimes
to be met with, strolling about near home--was their destination;
and after another half mile of gradual ascent through large enclosures,
where the ploughs at work, and the fresh made path spoke the farmer
counteracting the sweets of poetical despondence, and meaning
to have spring again, they gained the summit of the most considerable hill,
which parted Uppercross and Winthrop, and soon commanded a full view
of the latter, at the foot of the hill on the other side.

Winthrop, without beauty and without dignity, was stretched before them
an indifferent house, standing low, and hemmed in by the barns and