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 perfect. Even Colonel Hilton and Aileen, who had retreated from the school-child world, to a solitude in which they might uninterruptedly talk to each other of each other, abandoned their seclusion, and drew to the window in which Blanche's sofa was placed.

The long evening shadows were beginning to chequer the bright lawn, the still river, "one burnished sheet of living gold" reflected with unbroken clearness, the picturesque barges that floated lazily by, and the bright pleasure boats that stayed their rapid oars, at the sound of the music from the garden. The summer air, rich with the perfume of the magnolias, breathed softly over all this beauty. It was a scene that might have made a philanthropist of Timon. Even the bargemen refrained, for the time, from the stream of oaths which seem to be their idea of common conservationconversation [sic], and if they swore at all, swore blandly and benevolently. Aunt Sarah actually suspended her netting, and as the last notes of the song died away, Blanche drew a long breath and said, "That