Page:The New Monthly Magazine - Volume 095.djvu/88

Rh the sunny style of beauty; never was there a more pure mind, a more gentle disposition, or a more loving heart. Not that she was perfect, or without faults—she had many; but her very failings were rather the excess of good qualities. Perhaps the most prominent of them was an extreme sensitiveness, and fear of giving offence. An unkind or slighting word to herself, or the fancy that she had said one to another, would cause her the latest pain. She seemed, too, to bo almost incapable of refusing a favour, or saying "No" to any one, especially to those she loved; and her own will, and her own opinion, were always ready to give way to others. These were amiable weaknesses, it is true, but often more productive even than heavier faults, of evil and unhappiness through life. Such, and so loveable, was Mary Atherton at seventeen; and, amongst her other attractions, she possessed that greatest of all to a mother—to her she was still a child.

About this time an event occurred which broke the monotony of her life. It was the close of an April day. Mrs. Atherton was fatigued by her morning’s walk, and Mary set off, as she had sometimes done since her mother’s anxiety had so much disappeared, for a solitary stroll. It was one of those lovely spring evenings, which, coming after the gloomy, desolate nights of winter, are like little glimpses of Paradise; and which, with all, and more than the beauty of summer, are without its heat, dust, and satiety. The grass was green, the flowers were smelling, sweetly, the freshness of a recent shower was on the leaves, the birds were blithely singing, the trout were heaping merrily in the stream, the breeze was gently rustling among the trees; everything seemed hopeful, happy, and joyous, and Mary wandered on and on, and to and fro by the river’s side, enjoying it all to the utmost. The sun had set for a considerable time when she found herself at some distance from her home, close to one of the deep black pools of the river. She stepped on a granite rock that in this place rises high and abrupt from the water, and in thoughtful mood watched the dark shadows of night stealing over the tranquil pool and its silent eddies, whilst the young pale moon, just peering over the wood-covered hill behind, threw stray fitful gleams of its silver light upon the opposite bank. It was the hour and the scene to impress a youthful imagination; and Mary, who. notwithstanding her light heart and cheerful disposition, possessed a very vivid one, remained sunk in a dreamy reverie, half-conscious, half-forgetful of all around her. Suddenly, she was startled by a sharp cracking of twigs, as if some one was forcing his way through the brushwood close behind. She turned quickly around, and in so doing, slipped her foot, lost her balance, and fell headlong into the pool. With the speed of lightning, a man sprung on the rock, plunged into the water, and, seizing her as she rose to the surface, bore her senseless to the bank.

When Mary regained her consciousness, she found herself lying on the ground, with the stranger kneeling at her side and half supporting her. She had lost her senses rather from the fright, and the blow with which she had struck the water, than from the effect of the short time she had been in it; and now, though still rather faint and giddy, she arose at once, and expressed her gratitude to her preserver.

The stranger was a tall, dark man, who might have been thirty.years of age, or might have been older; his was one of those rare countenances that seem to afford solely any clue as to age—that look old