How it came to pass he never could rightly tell, but certain it is that, on lifting his eyes after a long contemplation of the shifting slides of fretted amber, he found himself alone in the glen—with the exception of a young lady who sat on the rocks a few paces distant. At the first glance he thought it was a child, for the slight form was habited in a Bloomer dress, and a broad hat shaded the graceful head. The wide trowsers were gathered around her ankles, and a pair of the prettiest feet he had ever seen dangled in the edge of the swift stream. She was idly plucking up tufts of grass from the crevices of the rock, and tossing them in the mouth of the cataract, and her face was partly turned toward him. It was the fair unknown of the evening before! There was no mistaking the lovely cheek and the rippled chestnut hair.
Mr. Bartlett felt—as he afterward expressed himself—a warm, sweet shudder run through all his veins. Alone with that lovely creature, below the outside surface of the earth! "Oh, if I could but speak to her! Her dress shows that she can lay aside the soulless forms of society in such a place as this: why not I? There's Larkin, and Kirkland, and lots of fellows I know, wouldn't hesitate a moment. But what shall I say? 'The scenery's very fine?' Pshaw! But the first sentence is the only difficulty—-the rest will come of itself. What if I address her boldly as an old acquaintance, and then apologize for my mistake? Upon my word, a good idea! So natural and possible!"
Having determined upon this plan, he immediately put it into action before the resolve had time to cool. His step was firm and his bearing was sufficiently confident as he approached her; but when she lifted her long lashes, disclosing a pair of large, limpid, hazel eyes, which regarded him, unabashed, with the transient curiosity one bestows upon a stranger, his face, I am sure, betrayed the humbug of the thing. The lady, however, not anticipating what followed, could scarcely have remarked it.
Raising his hat as he reached the corner of the rock upon which she sat, he said, in a voice so curiously balanced between his enforced boldness and his reflected surprise thereat, that he hardly recognized it as his own:
"How do you do, Miss Lawrence?"
The lady looked at him wonderingly—steady, child-like eyes, that frankly and innocently perused his face, as if seeking for some trace of a forgotten acquaintance. Mr. Bartlett could not withdraw his, although he knew that his face was getting redder and his respiration more unsteady every moment. He stammered forth:
"Miss Lawrence, of South Carolina, I believe."
"You are mistaken, Sir," said the lady, with the least shade of coldness in her voice, but it fell upon Mr. Bartlett like the wind from an iceberg—"I am not Miss Lawrence."
"I—I beg your pardon," he answered, somewhat confusedly. "You resemble her; I expected to meet her here. Will you please tell her I enquired for her? Here's my card!" Therewith he thrust both hands into his vest pockets, extracted a card from one of them, and laid it hastily upon the rock beside her.
"Bertha! Bertha!" rang through the glen, above the roar of the waterfall. The remainder of the party which the young lady had preceded now came into view descending toward her.