Love, as usual in such cases, borrowed the name of friendship, used her language, and claimed her privileges.

When Edith Bellenden was recalled to her mother's castle, it was astonishing by what singular and recurring accidents she often met young Morton in her sequestered walks, especially considering the distance of their places of abode.

Yet it somehow happened that she never expressed the surprise which the frequency of these rencontres ought naturally to have excited, and that their intercourse assumed gradually a more delicate character, and their meetings began to wear the air of appointments.

Books, drawings, letters, were exchanged between them, and every trifling commission, given or executed, gave rise to a new correspondence.

Love indeed was not yet mentioned between them by name, but each knew the situation of their own bosom, and could not but guess at that of the other.