Ronayne, of course, become once more a daily visitor, and soon beneath his hand, the garden began again to assume the beautiful garb it had worn at that season, for the last two years.  The interviews of the lovers here, freed from the restraints imposed upon them while in the Fort, had resumed that fervent character which had marked them on the afternoon of the day when they so solemnly interchanged their vows of undying faith.  They now no longer merely looked their love.  They spoke of it—­drank in the sweet avowal from each others lips, and luxuriated in the sweet pleasure it imparted.  They were as the whole world to each other, and although language could not convey a warmer expression of their feelings, than had already gone forth from their lips, still was the repetition replete with a sweetness that never palled upon the ear.  Like the man who never tires of gazing upon his gold, so did they never tire of the treasures of the expressed love, that daily grew more intense in their hearts.  And yet, notwithstanding this utter devotedness of soul—­notwithstanding her flattering heart confessed in secret the fullest realization of those dreams which had filled and sustained her in early girlhood—­albeit the assurance the felt that, in Ronayne, she had found the impersonation of the imaginings of her maturer life, still whenever he urged her in glowing language to name the day when she would become his wife, she evaded an answer, not from caprice, but because she would not bring to him a heart clouded by the slightest tinge of that anxiety with which ignorance of her father’s fate, could not fail to shade it.  A painful circumstance which happened about that period, at length, however, brought affairs to a crisis.

It was a lovely evening towards the close of May, and after a somewhat sultry morning which had been devoted to a ride on horseback along the lakeshore—­Mrs. Headley and Mrs. Elmsley, who had accompanied them, having returned home, that Ronayne and his betrothed sat in the little summer-house already described.  Mrs. Heywood who had been so far recovered from her weakness by the change of air, as to take slight exercise in the garden, supported by her daughter, and the young officer, had on this occasion expressed a wish to join them, in order that she might inhale the soft breeze that blew from the south, and enjoy once more the scenery of the long reach of the river, which wound its serpentine course from the direction of the farm.  To this desire no other objection was offered, than what was suggested by her companions, from an apprehension that the fatigue of the ascent would be too great for her.  She, however, persisted in her wish, declaring that she felt herself quite strong enough—­an assertion for which her returning color gave some evidence.  They ceased to oppose her.  It was the first time the invalid had been in the summer-house, since the same period the preceding spring, and naturally associating the recollection of her husband, with the familiar objects in the distance, she took her daughter’s hand, and said in a low and husky voice, that proved how much she had overrated her own strength: