Chapter VII.

"It is my lady: oh, it is my love!"
-- _Romeo and Juliet._

The agitation of the morning at Stillyside had
subsided as the day wore, but the mind of Amanda
Macdonald (for such was the name of the younger
and fairer denizen of that sequestered abode) re-
mained pensive and preoccupied; and when at her
usual hour she had ascended to her chamber, instead
of retiring to rest, she took up a tale of the trouba-
dours, and read; nor did she lay down the volume
till the sudden flickering of the candle in the socket
and the simultaneous tolling from the distant belfry
of the church of the village of Saint Laurent warned
her that it was midnight. Then, feeling oppressed,
alike with the heaviness of the atmosphere of her
room, and a strange weight at her heart, analogous
to the lassitude that is sometimes felt in the be-
ginning of sickness, she arose, drew aside the cur-
tains, and throwing open the folding window,
stepped on to the verandah. A clear Canadian
night, appearing a new and chaster version of the
day, greeted her. The moon, at night's meridian,
hung high in the fulness of its autumnal splendor,
tranquil in the solitude of the sky, a solitude un-
broken, save by a few small stars that were twink-
ling in the azure, and a fleet of low, dappled clouds
that were coasting the horizon. Awhile her eyes

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v?