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 familiar face, I bethought me that it was the season for summer travel, you might be away, and no one else would satisfy me; he might know, and time be saved. I asked one question, "Where are the Yules?" He answered, as he vanished, "The young people are all at the mountains." That was enough, and congratulating myself on the forethought which would save me some hundred miles of needless delay, away I went, and for days have been searching for you every where on that side of these hills which I know so well. But no Yules had passed, and feeling sure you were on this side I came, not around, but straight over, for this seemed a royal road to my love, and here I found her waiting for me by the way. Now Sylvia, are your doubts all answered, your fears all laid, your heart at rest on mine?"

As the time drew nearer Sylvia's task daunted her. Warwick was so confident, so glad and tender over her, it seemed like pronouncing the death doom to say those hard words, "It is too late." While she struggled to find some expression that should tell all kindly yet entirely, Adam, seeming to read some hint of her trouble, asked, with that gentleness which now overlaid his former abruptness, and was the more alluring for the contrast—

"Have I been too arrogant a lover? too sure of happiness, too blind to my small deserts? Sylvia, have I misunderstood the greeting you have given me?"

"Yes, Adam, utterly."

He knit his brows, his eye grew anxious, his content seemed rudely broken, but still hopefully he said—

"You mean that absence has changed you, that you do not love me as you did, and pity made you kind? Well, I receive the disappointment, but I do not relinquish my desire. What has been may be; let me try again to earn