"At least, I do not practise this accomplishment upon my friends;" replied Ida, piqued.
"Did I say that you did? I am not sure that I could not prove this point, too;—but we will let it pass for the present. I believe you to be what you appear to me. Carry would never forgive one who impugned your sincerity;—and what would Mr. Germaine say?"
This was a gentleman of the neighbourhood, whose marked attentions to Ida subjected her to the raillery of the Poplar-grove household.
"Nonsense!" said she, laughing. "He has never been beyond the outermost court of my heart."
"I own his does not appear likely to be the hand to unlock the penetralia. This is the spot I wanted to show you. Is it not a fairy nook?"
It was a mossy bank at the foot of a venerable sycamore, from whose branches the trailing vines touched their heads. A spring of the clearest crystal bubbled among its roots.
"Oh! for a fairy goblet!" said Ida.
"It is easily made, if these leaves are large enough," answered Charley. He gathered some, but they were too irregularly-shaped to suit his purpose. "It is a simple process," said he, as he failed, after several trials, to convey a thimbleful of water to his amused companion; "but as the man said who tried to fly and couldn't—'there is every thing in knowing how to do it.' I never like to be outdone, even in trifles. I saw some leaves as we came along that I know will do—excuse me a moment, and I will get them."
He was gone before she could object; and she strolled idly around the giant trunk of the sycamore, admiring the al fresco boudoir, of which it was the centre ornament. She set her foot upon something harder than the soft carpet—it was a small morocco case, which she picked up, with an ejaculation of surprise, and without a thought of who had dropped it, opened. She had nearly let it fall, as Carry's lovely face smiled at her from within. "Arthur has been here," was her comment, but a glossy curl untwined itself from an envelope labelled in Charley's hand—"The seat under the honeysuckle. May 1st, 18—," a date four years back. There was no impropriety in his having Carry's likenesss;—they had long been in feeling what they were shortly to become in name—brother and sister; but her heart beat so with indefinable terror that she could not stand;—it was as though, instead of the senseless case, another heart, its every throbbing revealed, lay in her hand.
"You are tired waiting, I suppose, but I had a longer search than—"