"Heyward! Duncan!" exclaimed Alice, bending forward to read his
half-averted countenance, until a lock of her golden hair rested on her
flushed cheek, and nearly concealed the tear that had started to her
eye; "did I think this idle tongue of mine had pained you, I would
silence it forever. Cora can say, if Cora would, how justly we have
prized your services, and how deep--I had almost said, how fervent--is
our gratitude."

"And will Cora attest the truth of this?" cried Duncan, suffering the
cloud to be chased from his countenance by a smile of open pleasure.
"What says our graver sister? Will she find an excuse for the neglect of
the knight in the duty of a soldier?"

Cora made no immediate answer, but turned her face toward the water, as
if looking on the sheet of the Horican. When she did bend her dark eyes
on the young man, they were yet filled with an expression of anguish
that at once drove every thought but that of kind solicitude from his
mind.

"You are not well, dearest Miss Munro!" he exclaimed; "we have trifled
while you are in suffering!"

"'Tis nothing," she answered, refusing his support with feminine
reserve. "That I cannot see the sunny side of the picture of life, like
this artless but ardent enthusiast," she added, laying her hand lightly,
but affectionately, on the arm of her sister, "is the penalty of
experience, and, perhaps, the misfortune of my nature. See," she
continued, as if determined to shake off infirmity, in a sense of duty;
"look around you, Major Heyward, and tell me what a prospect is this for