when Thomas left her at the gate in the fence which separated Evelina Adams's garden from the field, and watched her disappear between the flowers. The moon shone full on the garden. Evelina walked as it were over a silver dapple, which her light gown seemed to brush away and dispel for a moment. The bushes stood in sweet mysterious clumps of shadow.

Evelina had almost reached the house, and was close to the great althea bush, which cast a wide circle of shadow, when it seemed suddenly to separate and move into life.

The elder Evelina stepped out from the shadow of the bush. “Is that you, Evelina?” she said, in her soft, melancholy voice, which had in it a nervous vibration.

“Yes, Cousin Evelina.”

The elder Evelina's pale face, drooped about with gray curls, had an unfamiliar, almost uncanny, look in the moonlight, and might have been the sorrowful visage of some marble nymph, lovelorn, with unceasing grace. “Who—was with you?” she asked.

“The minister,” replied young Evelina.

“Did he meet you?”

“He met me in the lane, Cousin Evelina.”

“And he walked home with you across the field?”

“Yes, Cousin Evelina.”

Then the two entered the house, and nothing more was said about the matter. Young Evelina and Thomas Merriam agreed that their affection was to be kept a secret for a while. “For,” said young Evelina, “I cannot leave Cousin Evelina yet a while, and I cannot have her pestered with thinking about it, at least before another spring, when she has the garden fairly growing again.”

“That is nearly a whole year; it is August now,” said Thomas, half reproachfully, and he tightened his clasp of Evelina's slender fingers.

“I cannot help that,” replied Evelina. “It is for you to show Christian patience more than I, Thomas. If you could have seen poor Cousin Evelina, as I have seen her, through the long winter days, when her garden is dead, and she has only the few plants in her window left! When she is not watering and tending them she sits all day in the window and looks out over the garden and the naked bushes and the withered flower-stalks. She used not to be so, but would read her Bible and good books, and busy herself somewhat over fine 

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