There she is now, busy in her tiny garden, with the birds twittering
about her, and the yellow leaves falling; and her thick gauntlets on her
slender hands. How fresh and pretty she looks in that sad, sylvan
solitude, with the background of the dull crimson brick and the climbing
roses. Bars of sunshine fall through the branches above, across the thick
tapestry of blue, yellow, and crimson, that glow so richly upon their
deep green ground.

There is not much to be done just now, I fancy, in the gardening way; but
work is found or invented--for sometimes the hour is dull, and that
bright, spirited, and at heart, it may be, bitter exile, will make out
life somehow. There is music, and drawing. There are flowers, as we see,
and two or three correspondents, and walks into the village; and her dark
cousin, Dorcas, drives down sometimes in the pony-carriage, and is not
always silent; and indeed, they are a good deal together.

This young lady's little Eden, though overshadowed and encompassed with
the solemn sylvan cloister of nature's building, and vocal with sounds of
innocence--the songs of birds, and sometimes those of its young
mistress--was no more proof than the Mesopotamian haunt of our first
parents against the intrusion of darker spirits. So, as she worked, she
lifted up her eyes, and beheld a rather handsome young man standing at
the little wicket of her garden, with his gloved hand on the latch. A man
of fashion--a town man--his dress bespoke him: smooth cheeks, light brown
curling moustache, and eyes very peculiar both in shape and colour, and
something of elegance of finish in his other features, and of general
grace in the _coup d'oeil_, struck one at a glance. He was smiling
silently and slily on Rachel, who, with a little cry of surprise, said--