they walked up and down the long platform together, until the train

from the city thundered up, and painfully restrained its speed.
Then Betty, catching sight of a fawn-colored travelling dress

issuing from the ladies' car, caught hold of Leonard's arm, and
cried: "There she is!"

Miss Bartram heard the words, and looked down with a bright, glad
expression on her face. It was not her beauty that made Leonard's

heart suddenly stop beating; for she was not considered a beauty,
in society. It was something rarer than perfect beauty, yet even

more difficult to describe,--a serene, unconscious grace, a pure,
lofty maturity of womanhood, such as our souls bow down to in the

Santa Barbara of Palma Vecchio. Her features were not "faultlessly
regular," but they were informed with the finer harmonies of her

character. She was a woman, at whose feet a noble man might kneel,
lay his forehead on her knee, confess his sins, and be pardoned.

She stepped down to the platform, and Betty's arms were about her.
After a double embrace she gently disengaged herself, turned to

Leonard, gave him her hand, and said, with a smile which was
delightfully frank and cordial: "I will not wait for Betty's

introduction, Mr. Rambo. She has talked to me so much of her
brother Harry, that I quite know you already."

Leonard could neither withdraw his eyes nor his hand. It was like
a double burst of warmth and sunshine, in which his breast seemed

to expand, his stature to grow, and his whole nature to throb with
some new and wonderful force. A faint color came into Miss

Bartram's cheeks, as they stood thus, for a moment, face to face.
She seemed to be waiting for him to speak, but of this he never

thought; had any words come to his mind, his tongue could not have
uttered them.

"It is not Harry," Betty explained, striving to hide her
embarrassment. "This is Leonard Clare, who lives with us."

"Then I do not know you so well as I thought," Miss Bartram said to
him; "it is the beginning of a new acquaintance, after all."

"There isn't no harm done," Leonard answered, and instantly feeling
the awkwardness of the words, blushed so painfully that Miss

Bartram felt the inadequacy of her social tact to relieve so
manifest a case of distress. But she did, instinctively, what was

really best: she gave Leonard the check for her trunk, divided her
satchels with Betty, and walked to the carriage.

He did not sing, as he drove homewards down the valley. Seated on
the trunk, in front, he quietly governed the horses, while the two

girls, on the seat behind him, talked constantly and gaily. Only
the rich, steady tones of Miss Bartram's voice WOULD make their

way into his ears, and every light, carelesssentence printed
itself upon his memory. They came to him as if from some

inaccessible planet. Poor fellow! he was not the first to
feel "the desire of the moth for the star."

When they reached the Rambo farm-house, it was necessary that he
should give his hand to help her down from the clumsycarriage. He

held it but a moment; yet in that moment a gentle pulse throbbed
upon his hard palm, and he mechanically set his teeth, to keep down

the impulse which made him wild to hold it there forever. "Thank
you, Mr. Clare!" said Miss Bartram, and passed into the house.

When he followed presently, shouldering her trunk into the upper
best-room, and kneeling upon the floor to unbuckle the straps, she

found herself wondering: "Is this a knightly service, or the
menial duty of a porter? Can a man be both sensitive and ignorant,

chivalrous and vulgar?"
The question was not so easily decided, though no one guessed how

much Miss Bartram pondered it, during the succeeding days. She
insisted, from the first, that her coming should make no change in

the habits of the household; she rose in the cool, dewy summer
dawns, dined at noon in the old brown room beside the kitchen, and

only differed from the Rambos in sitting at her moonlit window, and
breathing the subtle odors of a myriad leaves, long after Betty was

sleeping the sleep of health.
It was strange how frequently the strong, not very graceful figure

of Leonard Clare marched through these reveries. She occasionally
spoke to him at the common table, or as she passed the borders of

the hay-field, where he and Henry were at work: but his words to
her were always few and constrained. What was there in his

eyes that haunted her? Not merely a most reverent admiration of
her pure womanly refinement, although she read that also; not a

fear of disparagement, such as his awkward speech implied, but
something which seemed to seek agonizingly for another language

than that of the lips,--something which appealed to her from equal
ground, and asked for an answer.

One evening she met him in the lane, as she returned from the
meadow. She carried a bunch of flowers, with delicate blue and

lilac bells, and asked him the name.
"Them's Brandywine cowslips," he answered; "I never heard no other

name.
"May I correct you?" she said, gently, and with a smile which she

meant to be playful. "I suppose the main thing is to speak one's
thought, but there are neat and orderly ways, and there are

careless ways." Thereupon she pointed out the inaccuracies of his
answer, he standing beside her, silent and attentive. When she

ceased, he did not immediately reply.
"You will take it in good part, will you not?" she continued. "I

hope I have not offended you."
"No!" he exclaimed, firmly, lifting his head, and looking at her.

The inscrutable expression in his dark gray eyes was stronger than
before, and all his features were more clearly drawn. He reminded

her of a picture of Adam which she had once seen: there was the
same rather low forehead, straight, even brows, full yet strong

mouth, and that broader form of chin which repeats and
balances the character of the forehead. He was not positively

handsome, but from head to foot he expressed a fresh, sound quality
of manhood.

Another question flashed across Miss Bartram's mind: Is life long
enough to transform this clay into marble? Here is a man in form,

and with all the dignity of the perfect masculine nature: shall the
broad, free intelligence, the grace and sweetness, the taste and

refinement, which the best culture gives, never be his also? If
not, woman must be content with faulty representations of her

ideal.
So musing, she walked on to the farm-house. Leonard had picked up

one of the blossoms she had let fall, and appeared to be curiously
examining it. If he had apologized for his want of grammar, or

promised to reform it, her interest in him might have diminished;
but his silence, his simple, natural obedience to some powerful

inner force, whatever it was, helped to strengthen that phantom of
him in her mind, which was now beginning to be a serious trouble.

Once again, the day before she left the Rambo farmhouse to return
to the city, she came upon him, alone. She had wandered off to the

Brandywine, to gather ferns at a rocky point where some choice
varieties were to be found. There were a few charming clumps,

half-way up a slaty cliff, which it did not seem possible to scale,
and she was standing at the base, looking up in vain longing, when

a voice, almost at her ear, said:
"Which ones do you want?"

Afterwards, she wondered that she did not start at the voice.
Leonard had come up the road from one of the lower fields: he wore

neither coat nor waistcoat, and his shirt, open at the throat,
showed the firm, beautiful white of the flesh below the strong tan

of his neck. Miss Bartram noticed the sinewy strength and
elasticity of his form, yet when she looked again at the ferns, she

shook her head, and answered:
"None, since I cannot have them."

Without saying a word, he took off his shoes, and commenced
climbing the nearly perpendicular face of the cliff. He had done

it before, many a time; but Miss Bartram, although she was familiar
with such exploits from the pages of many novels, had never seen

the reality, and it quite took away her breath.
When he descended with the ferns in his hand, she said: "It was a