Carice was strolling languidly along the bank of the creek¹, the heaviness of her heart easily discoverable in her absent face and languid step. Her eyes rested on the same stream, her ears were filled with the murmur² of the same leaves, which had witnessed her parting with Bergan, nearly two months before, yet neither made any distinct impression on her mind; she saw and heard but the flow and murmur of her own troubled thoughts. She had noticed a singular change of tone in Doctor Remy, of late, with respect to Bergan. He no longer made the young man the subject of free and frank conversation; if obliged to mention him at all, he did it with a certain reserve and caution, an air of picking and choosing his phrases, which at first puzzled, and was now beginning to alarm, the poor girl, already worn and nervous with the long sickness of hope deferred³.

Her fears, however, took a different direction from what Doctor Remy had anticipated. He had intended his alteration⁴ of manner to suggest the grave, stern reserve of a man, who, though he had himself lost confidence in his friend, is still honorably reluctant to injure him in the estimation of another. But from any such suggestion, Carice's mind was shielded by her loyal faith in her lover, as by an armor of proof. Dr. Remy's change of manner only served to strengthen her growing conviction that Bergan's failure either to write, or to appear in person, could be caused by nothing short of some great and unexpected calamity⁵. As her eyes followed a swift cloud-shadow from object to object of the summer landscape, so her mind followed the dark shade of her fears from point to point of possible ill. Perhaps the fever, quitting his mother, had fastened upon Bergan himself; perhaps he was ill, suffering, unconscious, dying, even, or—the thought shook her like a sudden blow—dead! Gasping⁶ for breath, she leaned against a friendly tree, and closed her eyes, as if to shut out the agonizing⁷ vision, which, nevertheless, rose but the more

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