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Rh earth at our feet, God's azure carpet hanging royally over our head; only the faint pure smell of an occasional wild flower comes to us on the air, for we are high up on the cliff now, and the gay garden flowers are too proud or too lazy to climb so high.

"And how soon will you be going back to Silverbridge?" asks Paul, his voice disturbing me in the midst of an agonizing calculation of how many yards of stuff an orthodox ample ball dress requires.

"Not until the end of the month." (Thirty, I should think. I wonder what gauze is a yard?)

"I suppose you are in a great hurry to get back?"

"Not at all! why should I be? Jack is in town, Dolly at school; it is very dull at home just now. And I have not been here ten days yet."

"But you have other friends in Silverbridge; there are some residents, are there not?"

"One or two." (I must have a pair of white satin shoes from Marshall's, and long gloves with a great many buttons—I shall not stick at a button or two.)

"Tell me their names, for they will be my neighbours too very shortly."

"We have neighbours, but do not visit them nor they us. Papa does not like them. We know only one family, and their name is—Tempest," I say, turning aside to pluck a modest spray of euphrasy, and looking down on its purple-streaked petals.

"A large family?"

"No; only a father and son."

Whether it is that I have really forgotten all about my absent lover, or that the thought of my new gown absorbs my faculties to such an extent that I am unable to entertain any other ideas, I do not, I am proud to say, blush in the very least, and am able