This was speedily noised abroad through the parish, and it was plain that on the morrow an unusually large congregation would assemble to hear the minister's first sermon after his entry into the married state, and to see his young wife.

The morrow came,-a fine Sunday morning late in June. Already the sound of the kirk bell was heard in the manse; already the minister's man had set out carrying the Bible under his arm, with the sermon shut in within the leaves; the boy and the maid-servant had also gone, in haste to reach the church-door in time to have some talk with the by. standers before service should commence. When these were fairly out of sight, the young clergyman issued from the garden-door, with his bride leaning on his arm. Walking slowly down the little avenue which led from the manse towards the highroad, they turned on the right into the footpath by the side of the planting leading to the church. Save the sound of the bell, which came upon their ears from the church still out of sight, all was quiet, the air was calm, the sky mild and clear, the earth green, fragrant, and glad. The heart of the young man swelled within him, and turning to the fair being by his side, he said, in a low, earnest tone,—

"Oh, Helen, you are welcome to the parish of your Henry. God bless you, and make me worthy of you."

She spoke not; but turned her eyes to meet his, which were swimming with tears. No wonder that the young clergyman felt proud and full at heart, as he gazed on her whom he had chosen for his own; no wonder that he was careful to lead her so that her feet might avoid every stone or twig that lay in her path, or that he advanced his hand to push back with a tender jealousy every too-presuming branch that threatened to brush her shoulder as she passed. Her delicate and graceful form bending lily-like as she walked, caught a singular and accordant loveliness from the pure white of her dress, which contrasted as she hung on her husband's arm with the deep black of his clerical costume. Her face was pale, calm, and of a beauty rare, and smileless.

Over the full white arch of her forehead was shaded hair of a light auburn; and her large eyes were of that deep, limpid, indolent blue, which is like the moonlit heaven we see mirrored down in a tranquil pool, mystic, fathomless, beautiful. There was, moreover, an indefinable coldness or sadness in her whole expression, most specifically marked, perhaps, in a slight and apparently habitual parting of the lips, which would have been noticed by an attentive observer. This listlessness, however, hung about her beauty like a mantle which became it. It seemed as if her mind by preference were ever at a distance, and as if, each time she looked at you, she were returning somewhence. So it was when she turned her eyes in reply to her husband's fervent blessing and tearful glance. At the same time there was a momentary change in her expression, appropriate, as it seemed, to that coming from a distance which we have described; the blue languor of her eyes turned of a sudden, nay, almost shot, into a something more keen, tremulous, and vivid, whether the rushing spark of fondness in a bride of three weeks, or some other more complex and characteristic feeling, it would have been difficult to tell. Evidently her husband received the look as a boon and assurance of affection, for he drew her closer to him, pressed her hand silently, and raised it to his lips. A kiss might have followed, but it was Sunday morning, in the open air, the planting was not thick, there might be persons on the other side, he had his ministerial bands on, and the kirk-bell was in his car. They walked slowly on, therefore; he opened the little wicket that crossed the path where it reached its highest elevation; and now the church was in view, with the people who had not yet entered gathered about the doors.

As the pair were seen approaching, the boys, the sexton's willing deputies at the bell-rope for the last sixteen minutes, ceased from their violent exertions, and placing their hands in their pockets, leant against the church-gable, adding their leisurely and open stares to the more discreet glances with which their seniors were already regarding the bride. A faint blush overspread the coun

tenance of the object of so much curiosity; her eyes sought the ground; and her husband, feeling her arm slightly tremble in his, hastened to lead her into church. Passing along the narrow aisle, with its smooth earthen floor, he reached one of the long pews on the left of the pulpit, distinguished as the minister's pew, by the plain cushion of green baize laid along the seat. The boy and the maid-servant from the manse, who, with the greater part of the congregation, had taken their places before the minister's arrival, came out of the pew to allow their mistress entrance. After handing her in, the clergyman passed on to the vestry at the farther end of the aisle, from which, the worshippers in the meantime having all composed themselves in their seats, he soon issued to ascend the pulpit-stair. The service passed much as usual, save that the hearers were perhaps less attentive to what was spoken than was customary with them, most eyes being directed at intervals towards the upper corner of the minister's pew, where, scarce moving, sat one, with whom also, as if he grudged being so near her and yet not by her, the speaker's thoughts were. What with the glimpses obtained by the more rude and curious of the congregation who had waited outside before service, what with the more steady view which others were able by their position in church, to obtain while the service lasted, and what with the brief introductions to the bride, with which a considerable number contrived to get themselves favoured after service was over, the whole population of the parish had that evening a pretty correct portrait of their minister's young wife to comment upon.

"And what think you of our minister's wife?" said the wife of the miller of the parish, on her way home from church, to the wife of a farmer, who, in respect of her husband's dignity as one of the elders, had enjoyed the opportunity for closer inspection of the bride, which a personal introduction afforded.

"Weel," was the reply, "there's no denyin' that she's bonny, for a lovelier face I never clappit e'e upon; but to me there's something waefu' about her-a want o' lichtness like."

Nearly three months had passed since that day. The busy occupations of summer and early autumn had come both to fisher and husbandman, and the minister's marriage had become a topic of the past. Yet, as we have before mentioned, it had not escaped the attention of the parishioners that a great change had taken place in the whole demeanour of their young pastor since his marriage. Instead of that overflowing joyousness which they had formerly remarked in him, there was now a gravity which it was difficult to provoke to a smile, a certain expression of care, of anxiety, sometimes amounting even to pain and restlessness. What was the cause of this? and was it in any way connected with his marriage? The parishioners had no means of answering this question; they very rarely saw the young clergyman and his wife when they were in the company of each other; indeed, they very rarely saw the latter at all, and never in such a way as to become familiar with her-a circumstance which by no means disposed them to speak favourably of her, it being the established morality for a clergyman's wife in that part of the country, that she should go about doing good, and learning who were sick within the bounds of her husband's parish.

Nor even had the families, who constituted what might be called the society of the district for some miles round, very ample opportunities for judging respecting the happiness of the young clergyman's married life. Occasionally, indeed, he and his wife paid visits to one or other of the families in question, when generally the same circle of persons would be invited to meet them; but of these occasions no more fruitful subject of remark could be gathered than this, of which, however, the ladies made the most, that the young minister exhibited, by his looks even at table, by the care with which he adjusted his wife's shawl as he led her out in the evening air, and by a thousand little acts the publicity of which is tolerated only during the honeymoon, an excess of matrimonial fondness, a perpetual yearning towards his young wife in the presence of other people, which it was reall provoking for other people to

ness. On the other hand, when these acquaintances paid visits to the manse of , they usually found the young wife scated at her piano, near a small window in the drawing-room, overlooking the garden; and in the absence of any just cause for depreciating her housewifely qualities, for all about her had an air of neatness, order, and beautiful taste, they then would fasten on the character of the music that lay scattered about as the most memorable thing, and would carry away a snatch of sentimental English from one sheet, and the decisive fact that the words on another were Italian, as circumstances and proofs to be afterwards produced in judgment against their hostess.

"Do you know, papa, that in all her music there is not a copy of Pope's Dying Christian ?" said one of these visitors to her clerical parent, on her evening narration at home of the history of the day.

"Very likely, my dear," was the answer. "I am sure her husband has not a copy of Turretin's Theologia Elenctica, in all his library."

Those who, had they been so inclined, had the best opportunities for forming an opinion as to the chances of a happy matrimonial future for the young Adam and Eve of the were the other in

manse of

mates of the manse, the man, the boy, and the maid-servant. All that they had noted, however, or were able to report to their friends the gossips of the parish, was, that the minister was very fond of his young wife; that, when he was not visiting his parishioners, they were almost always together, either within-doors, where he would read to her, or sit opposite to her writing his sermon, or hang over her with his back to the little window, as she sat at her piano and sang; or, if the evening were fine, out-of-doors, walking up and down in the garden, sometimes issuing at the little white gate at the end of the farthest mossy path, and strolling into the park beyond, at other times preferring the little avenue with its shade of small firs, and extending their slow ramble almost to within sight of the public road.

Such was the sum of the maid-servant's observations; that the minister was very fond of his young wife, and that they were almost always toge

ther. Good, lightsome, ignorant soul! happy she, to whom that bending of her master over the sweet instrument of wonder, watching the white fingers playing among the white keys, and that glinting of her mistress's white dress as she walked among the garden bushes leaning on her affectionate husband's arm, were pictures so paradisaic! Alas! it was far otherwise. What meant this yearning of one heart towards another, wedded to it before God and man? Why this continued lover-like longing; this timid, doubtful, tearful hovering round one whom he had not now to win; who, fair as she was, was his, and only his, his wife, his handmaid, the nightly partner of his breast? Why this too protracted wooing; this circling of two creatures round each other in mutual avoidance and pre-occupation, who, in the healthy course of nature, ought ere now to have been welded together into a true sphere-unit, restful itself, and revolving only in its own mild radiance? Oh, how unfit these, with their tremulous, inquiring, oft-interchanged glances,-his, tender and reproachful,-hers, sad, but yet as with a grief which made the heart hard; how unfit these for their place and circumstances! Those shrewd and sun-tanned reapers whetting their scythes for their morning's work, and that hoarse-voiced fisherman calling to his boy on the beach,— these, and such-like, were the parishioners into whose strong, rough souls the word of salvation was to be dropped, and over whose busy lives the watch was to be kept by that lovesick youth walking in garden-paths by the side of that cold-eyed beauty. Oh, world! why, because custom is venerable, wilt thou hang up a little violet-coloured lamp of perfumed oil, to light thereby a mine in which there are deep chasms, and black fallen blocks, and dripping filthy waters, and sallow night-plants growing from the walls?

And what, after all, was the cause of this deceptive unrest, of which the manse of was the scene? Was it that there was any inherent unsuitableness for each other, any want of harmony between the natures of the two beings whom Fate had thus conjoined by a holy and indissoluble tie? This, certainly, did

not appear, but rather the contrary. No fitter were a union between poetic strength and music, than might have seemed that between the young pastor and his wife. Did the secret cause, then, of so much solicitude lie in the absence, on either side, of that affection, without which marriage is a harsh adultery? This were, probably, it might have seemed, a truer surmise; nay, it was the surmise with which the young clergyman himself (for too evidently he was not the party who loved too little) would have been found by one who could have seen deep into him, to be racking in silence his sleepless soul. That troubled, reproachful glance at his partner's face, did it not seem to say, "Lovest thou me, Helen?" that impatience except at her side, and that restlessness even there, did it not seem a perpetual interrogation, a perpetual desire? "Oh, end this, thou loved one; dissolve thyself for once in womanly weakness, twining thy soft arms round thy husband's neck, so that henceforth he may walk in manly pride, no longer bowing the head before thee as his queen and life-giver, but governing thee smilingly, as his dear, gentle, trustful wife."

Yet there were no words spoken to bring the torment to a conclusion by eliciting the truth. In their walks and têtes-à-tête, he was the principal speaker; but the themes which he permitted himself were away from the main one-flowers, books, a song which pleased them both, her health, his little parish-bound schemes and aspirations, their early interviews when they first became known to each other, the fate of this or that of his or her acquaintances, and, above all, the excursion which he meant to make with her to a part of the country where she had spent some months of her girlhood, and of the lake and mountain scenery of which she entertained many happy recollections. Such, so far as the mere matter went, were their usual conversations. For some time after their marriage, indeed, it had not been precisely so; there was less timidity and restraint then; he would sit by her and wind his forefinger in her fair ringlets, or lay his head in her lap and gaze into her eyes, calling her his Beauty, pouting the lip at her playfully, re

proaching her in half earnest for her old coyness, her present coldness; but all this had ceased, discontinued by degrees; a thorn had been implanted in the quick of his soul which would not bear touching; and now his love, his increasing fondness, were shewn but in tones and manner. Sometimes the words of caress rose to his lips as if to burst out, and his arms tingled to enfold her; but a look at her smileless face and impassive form made him turn away heart-saddened, or brought the blood dancing through his throat in a proud and angry rush. Sometimes agonised by the intolerable endurance of his own thoughts, he was on the point of forcing himself into the mystery of hers, by all or any harshness; but then his love would ooze up through his firmness, bidding him not be cruel, or a terrible presentiment would withhold him on the brink, and drag him back to his uncertainty, telling him it were better thus. Poor two young hearts! this their own affliction was all in all to them.

Debarred from approaching the fatal subject with her, the young man was thrown back upon his own thoughts for the solution of what so baffled and chilled him. "Why is Helen thus?" was the question which, in his moody rides to visit this or that parishioner on some ministerial errand, he ever propounded to himself at the moment of his setting out, and which kept his mind excited and confused till he again dismounted at his own door. On almost every such occasion the whole panorama of his courtship used to pass anew before him, from the evening, five years before, which he first spent in his Helen's company, to the hour when, amid weeping bridesmaids, he held her hand in his, and felt himself moving, as it seemed, along with her through a lane of impeding sounds and outstretched aërial fingers. He called to mind, first, those dark and wet winter nights, due to slumberous and nutritious Exegesis at his own fireside, but which had found him still a truant under her window, pacing the pavement with timorous foot-fall, watching but for the blessing of her shadow if it might flit across the blind. And then, how these windowwatchings had been changed into visits; and how, through a long tan

gled avenue of hopes, fears, joys, estrangements, and bitter jealousies, he had still followed her, till he won her. Won her! ay, but how? This was the question which came again and again with horrible importunacy knocking at the door of his memory. That his Helen had never been to him a soft and yielding maiden, listening, pleased, and eager, with downcast eyelids, as if drinking in her lord's wisdom, this he knew; but it had been no matter of solicitude to him in taking the step of marriage; nay, rather it had been a reason, a whimsy, lying at the root of his love. No! his Helen was no toy, to be wooed languidly with smiles and half-shut eyes; she was a queen exacting in her grace, it was a pain of the whole spirit to be near her. Not to be kind and beaming, but to be stately, sad, permissive; this was the Helen he loved, the Helen of his imagination; so that the very sound of her name, the very word when written on paper, had something in it marble and Grecian. From the glances, the blushes of such a being to have inferred the assurance of affection, in this there was indeed ecstasy too great for mortal. So once he had reasoned, spurning the experience which ever and anon would appeal to his shrewder part, suggesting that the real Helen was probably a daughter of Eve, and that it might be not her, but a rib warm from his own side, and made in her likeness, that he was worshipping. Now, however, Experience came back, satiric, demoniac, polite, as if with inquiries how he felt. Oh, horror! had he accepted as evidence of a woman's love marks and tokens which derived all their value from a youth's mistake as to what it was possible for a woman to be, which, had the object of his passion been the incarnate essence of all that was earnest and sorrowful in her sex, had yet been too little ? Those glances, blushes, was it possible that they could have been not love's, but some devilish counterfeit's, the passing evidences in the countenance of some indefinable spasm of the spirit at the moment ? That listlessness, that seeming want of interest in things present, that so beautiful parting of the lips, could they be, not, as he had imagined them, the native style

and expression of a certain high and rare order of spirit, but mere womanly heart-weariness, which might be traced to a cause ?

Day after day did he rack himself thus. Fain would he have settled in the conclusion that Helen was unhappy only in her present lot, in her removal from her old circle, and from the highly cultured society to which she had been accustomed. That she should be so would indeed have been a bitter discovery, because it would have shewn him how little it lay with him by his love, or any endeavours, to make up for the loss of those things which she regretted ; because, in fact, it would have revealed to him that, shut up in that spot of earth where God or his fate had appointed him, he must labour on, a lonely man. Still even in this supposition he had hope for her, that Time, with its all-smoothing hand, might smooth this roughness also. And oh, how gladly would he have taken refuge in this conclusion, with all its misery, and hid his face in it, so that he could but shut out from his view the alternative which waited for him, as with dragonmouth!" His Helen-she loved another!" The thought would come; and, as it came, through love, through natural kindliness, through professional habit of spirit, and whatever of truer Christian grace there was in him, the black blood would come rushing, boiling, till his veins, filled with the fiendish fluid, were stiffened like cordage in his body, and he stood, that clear-souled youth, his throat swollen with rage, and his face gnashed and disshrivelled into the scowl of a Judas. Oh, but was it possible? Granted that his infatuation, his blindness, might have led him to such a horrid issue as this blasted wedlock, could she, this woman, who was at least well-born and honourable, have so foully deceived him? Ah! who could tell? Who knew what heart-weariness and sore imperious necessity on the part of the maiden, might not bring about or acquiesce in, where there was such importunacy, and such ignorance on the part of the lover? And softening down again under the gentler thought, the tears would begin to flow, and he would hurry through the air as if revelling in rapid motion.