Many a time, when we have had the benefit of a full moon, and when the night has been mild and balmy, when, moreover, a certain nightingale has been singing, and a certain stream, hid in alders, has lent the song a soft accompaniment, the remote church-bell of the one hamlet in a district of ten miles, has tolled midnight ere the lord of the wood left us at our porch.

Free-flowing was his talk at such hours, and far more quiet and gentle than in the day-time and before numbers.
He would then forget politics and discussion, and would dwell on the past times of his house, on his family history, on himself and his own feelings--subjects each and all invested with a peculiar zest, for they were each and all unique.

One glorious night in June, after I had been taunting him about his ideal bride and asking him when she would come and graft her foreign beauty on the old Hunsden oak, he answered suddenly-- "You call her ideal; but see, here is her shadow; and there cannot be a shadow without a substance." He had led us from the depth of the "winding way" into a glade from whence the beeches withdrew, leaving it open to the sky; an unclouded moon poured her light into this glade, and Hunsden held out under her beam an ivory miniature.
Frances, with eagerness, examined it first; then she gave it to me--still, however, pushing her little face close to mine, and seeking in my eyes what I thought of the portrait.

I thought it represented a very handsome and very individual-looking female face, with, as he had once said, "straight and harmonious features." It was dark; the hair, raven-black, swept not only from the brow, but from the temples--seemed thrust away carelessly, as if such beauty dispensed with, nay, despised arrangement.

The Italian eye looked straight into you, and an independent, determined eye it was; the mouth was as firm as fine; the chin ditto.