[ethfilter-general] Owly towards the door. Her laugh stopped him. "Come! I reck

[Zomer F. <do...@ac...>]

Ent out into the lane. The gate of the rose garden opposite was open.
She walked determinedly forward and entered. In that doubly stagnant air
the odor of the roses was so suffocating and overpowering that she had
to stop to take breath. The whole garden, except a near cluster of
pear-trees, was brightly illuminated by the moonlight. No one was to be
seen along the length of the broad allee, strewn an inch deep with
scattered red and yellow petals--colorless in the moonbeams. She was
turning away, when Dick's familiar voice, but with a strange accent of
entreaty in it, broke the silence. It seemed to her vaguely to come from
within the pear-tree shadow. "But we must understand one another, my
darling! Tell me all. This suspense, this mystery, this brief moment of
happiness, and these hours of parting and torment, are killing me!" A
slight cough broke from Aunt Viney. She had heard enough--she did not
wish to hear more. The mystery was explained. Dick loved Cecily; the
coyness or hesitation was not on HIS part. Some idiotic girlish caprice,
quite inconsistent with what she had noticed at the mission church, was
keeping Cecily silent, reserved, and exasperating to her lover. She
would have a talk with the young lady, without revealing the fact that
she had overheard them. She was perhaps a little hurt that affairs
should have reached this point without some show of confidence to her
from the young people. Dick might naturally be reticent--but Cecily! She
did not even look towards the pear-tree, but turned and walked stiffly
out of the gate. As she was crossing the lane she suddenly started back
in utter dismay and consternation! For Cecily, her niece,--in her own
proper person,--was actually just coming OUT OF THE HOUSE! Aunt Viney
caught her wrist. "Where have you been?" she asked quickly. "In the
house," stammered Cecily, with a frig