JASPER ST. AUBYN;
OR THE COURSE OF PASSION.
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BY HENRY WILLIAM HERBERT.
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(Continued from page 91.)
The morning was still very young, and the sun, which was but just beginning to rise above the brow of the eastern hill, poured his long, yellow rays, full of a million dusty motes, in almost level lines down the soft, green slopes, diversified by hundreds of cool purple shadows, projected far and wide over the laughing landscape, from every tree and bush that intercepted the mild light.
The dews of the preceding night still clustered unexhaled, sparkling like diamonds to the morning beams, on every leaf and flower; a soft west wind was playing gently with the thousands of bright buds and blossoms which decked the pleasant gardens; and the whole air was perfumed with the delicate fragrance of the mignionette and roses, which filled the luxuriant parterres. The hum of the reveling bees came to the ear with a sweet domestic sound, and the rich carol of the blackbird and the thrush came swelling from the tangled shrubberies, full fraught with gratitude and glee.
It was into such a scene, and among such sights and sounds, that the young free-trader wandered forth from the tranquillity and gloom of the sick chamber in which he had spent a sleepless night; but his mind had been too deeply stirred by his conversation with Sir Miles St. Aubyn, and chords of too powerful feeling had been thrilled into sudden and painful life, to allow him to be penetrated, as he might have been in a less agitated hour, by the sweet influences of the time and season.
Still, though he was unconscious of the pleasant sights and sounds and smells which surrounded him, as he strolled slowly through the bowery walks of the old garden, they had more or less effect upon his perturbed and bitter spirit; and his mood became gradually softer, as he mused upon what had passed within the last hour, alone in that bright solitude.