“I won’t any more, papa; I’ll leave him to his own devices, since he shows himself so ungrateful for my interest in his welfare,” Elsie said, looking first at her father and then at Harold with a merry twinkle in her eye.

“I don’t think I’ve asked how you like your new home and prospects, Harold,” said Mr. Dinsmore, changing the subject.

“Very much, thank you; except that they take me so far from the rest of the family.”

A few months before this Harold had met with a piece of rare good fortune, looked at from a worldly point of view, in being adopted as his sole heir by a rich and childless Louisiana planter, a distant relative of Mrs. Allison.

“Ah, that is an objection,” returned Mr. Dinsmore; “but you will be forming new and closer ties, that will doubtless go far to compensate for the partial loss of the old.  I hope you are enjoying yourself here?”

“I am indeed, thank you.”  This answer was true, yet Harold felt himself flush as he spoke, for there was one serious drawback upon his felicity; he could seldom get a word alone with Elsie; she and her father were so inseparable that he scarcely saw the one without the other.  And Harold strongly coveted an occasional monopoly of the sweet girl’s society.  He had come to Viamede with a purpose entirely unsuspected by her or her apparently vigilant guardian.

He should perhaps, have confided his secret to Mr. Dinsmore first, but his heart failed him; and “what would be the use?” he asked himself, “if Elsie is not willing?  Ah, if I could but be alone with her for an hour!”

The coveted opportunity offered itself at last, quite unexpectedly.  Coming out upon the veranda one afternoon, he saw Elsie sitting alone under a tree far down on the lawn.  He hastened towards her.

“I am glad to see you,” she said, looking up with a smile and making room for him on the seat by her side.  “You see I am ‘lone and lorn,’ Mr. Durand having carried off papa to look at some new improvement in his sugar-house machinery.”

“Ah! and when will your father return?”

“In about an hour, I presume.  Shall you attend Aunt Adie’s wedding?” she asked.

“Yes, I think so.  Don’t you sometimes feel as if you’d like to stay here altogether?”

“Yes, and no; it’s very lovely, and the more charming I believe, because it is my own; but—­there is so much more to bind me to the Oaks, and I could never live far away from papa.”

“Couldn’t you?  I hoped——­ Oh, Elsie, couldn’t you possibly love some one else better even than you love him?  You’re more to me than father, mother, and all the world beside.  I have wanted to tell you so for years, but while I was comparatively poor your fortune sealed my lips.  Now I am rich, and I lay all I have at your feet; myself included; and——­”

“Oh, Harold, hush!” she cried in trembling tones, flushing and paling by turns, and putting up her hand as if to stop the torrent of words he was pouring forth so unexpectedly that astonishment had struck her dumb for an instant; “oh! don’t say any more, I—­I thought you surely knew that—­that I am already engaged.”