am worthy of your love. If ever the day shall come when you can say to me,
'Now I see that love is no tinted dream; now I ask you to be my wife
indeed,' then, upon that day--But until then ask not of me what you asked
back there among the violets. I, too, am proud"--Her voice broke.

"Evelyn!" he cried. "Poor child--poor friend"--

She turned her face upon him. "Don't!" she said, and her lips were
smiling, though her eyes were full of tears. "We have forgot that it is
May Day, and that we must be light of heart. Look how white is that
dogwood-tree! Break me a bough for my chimney-piece at Williamsburgh."

He brought her a branch of the starry blossoms. "Did you notice," she
asked, "that the girl who ran--Audrey--wore dogwood in her hair? You could
see her heart beat with very love of living. She was of the woods, like a
dryad. Had the prizes been of my choosing, she should have had a gift more
poetical than a guinea."

Haward opened the coach door, and stood gravely aside while she entered
the vehicle and took her seat, depositing her flowers upon the cushions
beside her. The Colonel stirred, uncrossed his legs, yawned, pulled the
handkerchief from his face, and opened his eyes.

"Faith!" he exclaimed, straightening himself, and taking up his radiant
humor where, upon falling-asleep, he had let it drop. "The way must have
suddenly become smooth as a road in Venice, for I've felt no jolting this
half hour. Flowers, Evelyn? and Haward afoot? You've been on a woodland
saunter, then, while I enacted Solomon's sluggard!" The worthy parent's
eyes began to twinkle. "What flowers did you find? They have strange
blooms here, and yet I warrant that even in these woods one might come