But the giant oaks round him go through a revolving series of verdure and youth, and the green of the centenarian is as vivid in the beams of May as that of the sapling by its side.

"Mine shall be your spring, but not your winter!" exclaimed the aspirant.
Wrapped in these sanguine and joyous reveries, Glyndon, quitting the woods, found himself amidst cultivated fields and vineyards to which his footstep had not before wandered; and there stood, by the skirts of a green lane that reminded him of verdant England, a modest house,--half cottage, half farm.

The door was open, and he saw a girl at work with her distaff.

She looked up, uttered a slight cry, and, tripping gayly into the lane to his side, he recognised the dark-eyed Fillide.
"Hist!" she said, archly putting her finger to her lip; "do not speak loud,--my mother is asleep within; and I knew you would come to see me.
It is kind!" Glyndon, with a little embarrassment, accepted the compliment to his kindness, which he did not exactly deserve.

"You have thought, then, of me, fair Fillide ?" "Yes," answered the girl, colouring, but with that frank, bold ingenuousness, which characterises the females of Italy, especially of the lower class, and in the southern provinces,--"oh, yes! I have thought of little else.