While the old man spoke, Adam Forrester and Lilias had carelessly
thrown their eyes around, and perceived that the spot where they had
chanced to pause possessed a quiet charm, which was well enough
adapted to their present mood of mind. It was a small rise of ground,
with a certain regularity of shape, that had perhaps been bestowed by
art; and a group of trees, which almost surrounded it, threw their
pensive shadows across and far beyond, although some softened glory of
the sunshine found its way there. The ancestral mansion, wherein the
lovers would dwell together, appeared on one side, and the ivied
church, where they were to worship, on another. Happening to cast
their eyes on the ground, they smiled, yet with a sense of wonder, to
see that a pale lily was growing at their feet.

"We will build our Temple here," said they, simultaneously, and with
an indescribable conviction, that they had at last found the very
spot.

Yet, while they uttered this exclamation, the young man and the Lily
turned an apprehensive glance at their dreary associate, deeming it
hardly possible, that some tale of earthly affliction should not make
those precincts loathsome, as in every former case. The old man stood
just behind them, so as to form the chief figure in the group, with
his sable cloak muffling the lower part of his visage, and his sombre
list overshadowing his brows. But he gave no word of dissent from
their purpose; and an inscrutable smile was accepted by the lovers as
a token that here had been no footprint of guilt or sorrow, to
desecrate the site of their Temple of Happiness.

In a little time longer, while summer was still in its prime, the
fairy structure of the Temple arose on the summit of the knoll, amid