the cloud upon her brow vanished, as she clasped her hands in child-like
joyousness.

'God bless you, dear old Helvellyn,' she exclaimed, looking up at the
sombre crest of the mountain. 'Perhaps if it had not been for you he
would have never proposed.'

But she was obliged to dismiss this idea instantly; for to suppose John
Hammond's avowal of his love an accident, the mere impulse of a weak
moment, would be despair. Had he not told her how she had grown nearer
and nearer to his heart, day by day, and hour by hour, until she had
become part of his life? He had told her this--he, in whom she believed
as in the very spirit of truth.

She wandered about the gardens for an hour after the carriage had
started for Windermere, revisiting every spot where she and her lover
had walked together within the last three days, living over again the
rapture of those hours, repeating to herself his words, recalling his
looks, with the fatuity of a first girlish love. And yet amidst the
silliness inseparable from love's young dream, there was a depth of true
womanly feeling, thoughtful, unselfish, forecasting a future which was
not to travel always along the primrose path of dalliance--a future in
which the roses were not always to be thornless.

John Hammond was going to London to work for a position in the world, to
strive and labour among the seething mass of strugglers, all pressing
onward for the same goal--independence, wealth, renown. Little as Mary
know of the world by experience, she had at least heard the wiseacres
talk; and that which she had heard was calculated to depress rather than
to inspire industrious youth. She had heard how the professions were all