Tennyson.

The next morning was brilliant and cool, the earth and heavens shining after the rain of the past night.  I was dressed long, long before breakfast:  it would be so tiresome to wait in my room till the bell rang; yet if I went down-stairs, would it not look as if I wanted to see Mr. Langenau again?  I need not go to the library, of course, but I could scarcely avoid being seen from the library if I went out.  But why suppose that he would be down again so early?  It was very improbable, and so, affectionately deceived, I put on a hat and walking-jacket and stole down the stairs.  I saw by the clock in the lower hall that it was half an hour earlier than I had come down the morning before; at which I was secretly chagrined, for now there was no danger, alias hope, of seeing Mr. Langenau.

But probably he had forgotten all about the foolish half-hour that had given me so much to think about.  I glanced into the library, which was empty, and hurried out of the hall-door, secretly disappointed.

I took the path that led over the hill to the river.  It passed through the garden, under the long arbors of grapevines, over the hill, and through a grove of maples, ending at the river where the boat-house stood.  The brightness of the morning was not lost on me, and before I reached the maple-grove I was buoyant and happy.  At the entrance of the grove (which was traversed by several paths, the principal coming up directly from the river) I came suddenly upon the tutor, walking rapidly, with a pair of oars over his shoulder.  He started, and for a moment we both stood still and did not speak.  I could only think with confusion of my emotion when he sang.

“You are always early,” he said, with his slight, very slight, foreign accent, “earlier than yesterday by half an hour,” he added, looking at his watch.  My heart gave a great bound of pleasure.  Then he had not forgotten!  How he must have seen all this.

He stood and talked with me for some moments, and then desperately I made a movement to go on.  I do not believe, at least I am not sure, that at first he had any intention of going with me.  But it was not in human nature to withstand the flattery of such emotion as his presence seemed always to inspire in me; and then, I have no doubt, he had a certain pleasure in talking to me outside of that; and then the morning was so lovely and he had so much of books.

He proposed to show me a walk I had not taken.  There was a little hesitation in his manner, but he was reassured by my look of pleasure, and throwing down the oars under a tree, he turned and walked beside me.  No doubt he said to himself, “America!  This paradise of girlhood;—­there can be no objection.”  It was heavenly sweet, that walk—­the birds, the sky, the dewiness and freshness of all nature and all life.  It seemed the unstained beginning of all things to me.

The woods were wet; we could not go through them, and so we went a longer way, along the river and back by the road.