CHAPTER VII.

Si tout le monde vous ressembloit, un roman seroit bientot fini!-MOLIere.

NOVEMBER's leaden clouds and fitful gleams of sunshine, coming like visitations of heaveninspired thoughts, and vanishing, alas! like illusions, harmonised with the state of Bessie's mind. She was much abroad, rambling alone over her favourite haunts, and living over the dangerous past. This was at least a present relief and solace; and her mother, though she feared it might minister to the morbid state of

her child's feelings, had not the resolution to interpose her authority to prevent it. Bessie was one evening at twilight returning homeward by a road (if road that might be called which was merely a horse-path) that communicated at the distance of a mile and a half with the main road to Boston. It led by the margin of a little brook, through a pine wood that was just now powdered over with a light snow. Meredith and Bessie had always taken their way through this sequestered wood in their walks and rides, going and returning; not a step of it but was eloquent with some treasured word, some well-remembered emotion. Bessie had seated herself on a fallen trunk, an accustomed resting-place, and was looking at a bunch of ground pine and wild periwinkles as if she were perusing them; the sensations of happier hours had stolen over her, the painful present

and uncertain future were forgotten, when she was roused from her dreamy state by the trampling of an approaching horse. Women, most women, are cowards on instinct. Bessie cast one glance backward, and saw the horse was ridden by a person in a military dress. A stranger in this private path was rather an alarming apparition, and she started homeward with hasty steps. The rider mended his horse's pace, and was soon even with her, and in another instant had dismounted and exclaimed-" Bessie Lee!-It is you, Bessie-I

cannot be mistaken!

Bessie smiled at this familiar salutation, and did not refuse her hand to the stranger, who with eager cordiality offered his; but not being in the least a woman of the world, it was plain she explored his face in vain for some recog nisable feature." No, you do not remember

me-that is evident," he said, with a tone of disappointment. "Is there not a vestige, Bessie, of your old playmate, in the whiskered, weatherbeaten personage before you?"

"Herbert Linwood!" she exclaimed, and a glow of glad recognition mounted from her heart to her cheek.

'Ah, thank you, Bessie, better late than never, but it is sad to be forgotten. You are much less changed than I, undoubtedly; but I should have known you if nothing were unaltered save the colour of your eye; however, I have always worn your likeness here," he gallantly added, putting his hand to his heart, "and, in truth, you are but the opening bud expanded to the flower, while I have undergone a change like the chestnut, from the tassel to the bearded husk." Bessie soon began to perceive familiar tones and expressions, and she

consoled Herbert with the assurance that it

was only her surprise, his growth, change of dress, &c., that prevented her from knowing him at once. They soon passed to mutual inquiries, by which it appeared that Herbert had come to Massachusetts on military business. The visit to Westbrook was a little episode of his own insertion. He was to return in a few weeks to West Point, where he was charmed to hear he should meet Eliot.

"I am cut off from my own family," he said, "and, really, I pine for a friend. I gather from Belle's letters that my father is more and more estranged from me. While he thought I was fighting on the losing side, and in peril of my head, his generous spirit was placable; but since the result of our contest has become doubtful, even to him, he has waxed hotter and hotter against me; and if we finally pre