nature in bloom, if you, like the guardian nymph of these floral
treasures, will sit beside me."

He drew her gently back into the seat, and looked long and earnestly
upon her face. She felt his gaze, but dared not return it, and her fair
head drooped like a flower that bends beneath the glance of a scorching
sun.

"Miss Weems," he said at last, but his voice was so low and tremulous
that it scarce rose above the rustle of the swinging willow boughs, "you
are soon to be a bride, and in your path the kind Destinies will shower
blessings. When they wreathe the orange blossoms in your hair, and you
are led to the altar by the hand to which you must cling for life, if I
should not be there to wish you joy, you will not deem, will you, that I
am less your friend?"

The fair head drooping yet lower was her only answer.

"And when you shall be the mistress of a home where Content will be
shrined, the companion of your virtues, and over your threshold many
friends shall be welcomed, if I should never sit beside your
hearthstone, you will not, will you, believe that I have forgotten, or
that I could forget?"

Still lower the fair head drooped, but she answered only with a falling
tear.

"I told you the other day that we should be strangers through life, and
why, I must not tell, although perhaps your woman's heart may whisper,
and yet not condemn me for that which, Heaven knows, I have struggled