"This is very lovely, Miss Prevost," said the young soldier, when the long meditative lapse was drawing to a close, "but I should think the scene would become somewhat monotonous. Hemmed in by these woods, the country round, though beautiful in itself, must pall upon the taste."
"Oh, no!" cried Edith, eagerly. "It is full of variety. Each day affords something new, and every morning walk displays a thousand fresh beauties. Let us go and take a ramble, if you have nothing better to do; and I will show you there is no monotony. Come, Walter, take your rifle, and go with us. Father, this is not your hour. Can you never come before the sun has passed his height and see the shadows fall the other way?"
"Mine is the evening hour, my child," answered Mr. Prevost, somewhat sadly, "but go, Edith, and show our noble friend the scenes you so much delight in. He will need something to make his stay in this dull place somewhat less heavy."
The stranger made no complimentary reply, for his thoughts were busy with Edith; and he was at that moment comparing her frank, unconscious, undesigning offer to lead him through love-like woods and glades, with the wily hesitation of a court coquette.
"Perhaps you are not disposed to walk," said Edith, marking his reverie, and startling him from it.
"I shall be delighted," he said, eagerly, and truly, too. "You must forgive me for being somewhat absent, Miss Prevost. Your father knows I have much to think of, though indeed thought at present is vain; and you will confer a boon by banishing that idle but importunate companion."
"Oh, then, you shall not think at all when you are with me," said Edith, smiling, and away she ran to cover her head with one of those black wimples very generally worn by the women of that day.
Beyond the cultivated ground, as you descended the gentle hill, lay the deep forest at the distance of some three hundred yards, and at its edge Edith paused and made her companion turn to see how beautiful the cottage looked upon its eminence, shaded by gorgeous maple trees in their gold and crimson garb of autumn, with a tall rock or two of gray and mossy stone rising up amidst them.
Lord H---- gazed at the house and saw that it was picturesque and beautiful--very different indeed from any other dwelling he had seen on the western side of the Atlantic; but there was absent thoughtfulness in his eyes, and Edith thought he did not admire it half enough.
"How strange are men's prejudices and prepossessions," said Lord H----, as they paused to gaze at a spot where a large extent of low woodland lay open to the eye below them. "We are incredulous of everything we have not seen, or to the conception of which we have not been led by very near approaches. Had anyone shown me, ere I reached these shores, a picture of an autumn scene in America, though it had been perfect as a portrait, hue for hue, or even inferior, in its striking coloring, to the reality, I should have laughed at it as a most extravagant exaggeration. Did not the first autumn you passed here make you think yourself in fairyland?"