His stroll was longer than he meant; and when he returned up the Linden Walk leading to the breakfast-room, and ascended the piazza steps, and glanced into the wide window there, he saw his mother seated not far from the table; her face turned toward his own; and heard her gay voice, and peculiarly light and buoyant laugh, accusing him, and not her, of being the morning's laggard now. Dates was busy among some spoons and napkins at a side-stand.

Summoning all possible cheerfulness to his face, Pierre entered the room. Remembering his carefulness in bathing and dressing; and knowing that there is no air so calculated to give bloom to the cheek as that of a damply fresh, cool, and misty morning, Pierre persuaded himself that small trace would now be found on him of his long night of watching.

"Good morning sister;-such a famous stroll! I have been all the way to"-

"Where? good heavens! where? for such a look as that! — why, Pierre, Pierre? what ails thee? Dates, I will touch the bell presently."

As the good servitor fumbled for a moment among the napkins, as if unwilling to stir so summarily from his accustomed duty, and not without some of a well and long-tried old domestic's vague, intermitted murmuring, at being wholly excluded from a matter of family interest; Mrs. Glendinning kept her fixed eye on Pierre, who, unmindful that the breakfast was not yet entirely ready, seating himself at the table, began helping himself-though but nervously enough-to the cream and sugar. The moment the door closed on Dates, the mother sprang to her feet, and threw her arms around her son; but in that embrace, Pierre miserably felt that their two hearts beat not together in such unison as before.

"What haggard thing possesses thee, my son? Speak, this is incomprehensible! Lucy;-fie! — not she? — no love-quarrel there;-speak, speak, my darling boy!"

"My dear sister," began Pierre.

"Sister me not, now, Pierre;-I am thy mother."

"Well, then, dear mother, thou art quite as incomprehensible to me as I to"-

"Talk faster, Pierre-this calmness freezes me. Tell me; for, by my soul, something most wonderful must have happened to thee. Thou art my son, and I command thee. It is not Lucy; it is something else. Tell me."

"My dear mother," said Pierre, impulsively moving his chair backward from the table, "if thou wouldst only believe me when I say it, I have really nothing to tell thee. Thou knowest that sometimes, when I happen to feel very foolishly studious and philosophical, I sit up late in my chamber; and then, regardless of the hour, foolishly run out into the air, for a long stroll across the meadows. I took such a stroll last night; and had but little time left for napping afterward; and what nap I had I was none the better for. But I won't be so silly again, soon; so do, dearest mother, stop looking at me, and let us to breakfast.-Dates! Touch the bell there, sister."

"Stay, Pierre! — There is a heaviness in this hour. I feel, I know, that thou art deceiving me;-perhaps I erred in seeking to wrest thy secret from thee; but believe me, my son, I never thought thou hadst any secret thing from me, except thy first love for Lucy-and that, my own womanhood tells me, was most pardonable and right. But now, what can it be? Pierre, Pierre! consider well before thou determinest upon withholding confidence from me. I am thy mother. It may prove a fatal thing. Can that be good and virtuous, Pierre, which shrinks from a mother's knowledge? Let us not loose hands so, Pierre; thy confidence from me, mine goes from thee. Now, shall I touch the bell?"

Pierre, who had thus far been vainly seeking to occupy his hands with his cup and spoon; he now paused, and unconsciously fastened a speechless glance of mournfulness upon his mother. Again he felt presentiments of his mother's newly-revealed character. He foresaw the supposed indignation of her wounded pride; her gradually estranged affections thereupon; he knew her firmness, and her exaggerated ideas of the inalienable allegiance of a son. He trembled to think, that now indeed was come the first initial moment of his heavy trial. But though he' knew all the significance of his mother's attitude, as she stood before him, intently eying him, with one hand upon the bell-cord; and though he felt that the same opening of the door that should now admit Dates, could not but give eternal exit to all confidence between him and his mother; and though he felt, too, that this was his mother's latent thought; nevertheless, he was girded up in his well-considered resolution.

"Pierre, Pierre! shall I touch the bell?"

"Mother, stay! — yes do, sister."

The bell was rung; and at the summons Dates entered; and looking with some significance at Mrs. Glendinning, said, — "His Reverence has come, my mistress, and is now in the west parlor."

"Show Mr. Palsgrave in here immediately; and bring up the coffee; did I not tell you I expected him to breakfast this morning?"

"Yes, my mistress; but I thought that-that-just then"- glancing alarmedly from mother to son.

"Oh, my good Dates, nothing has happened," cried Mrs. Glendinning, lightly, and with a bitter smile, looking toward her son, — "show Mr. Palsgrave in. Pierre, I did not see thee, to tell thee, last night; but Mr. Palsgrave breakfasts with us by invitation. I was at the parsonage yesterday, to see him about that wretched affair of Delly, and we are finally to settle upon what is to be done this morning. But my mind is made up concerning Ned; no such profligate shall pollute this place; nor shall the disgraceful Delly."

Fortunately, the abrupt entrance of the clergyman, here turned away attention from the sudden pallor of Pierre's countenance, and afforded him time to rally.

"Good morning, Madam; good morning, sir," said Mr. Palsgrave, in a singularly mild, flute-like voice, turning to Mrs. Glendinning and her son; the lady receiving him with answering cordiality, but Pierre too embarrassed just then to be equally polite. As for one brief moment Mr. Palsgrave stood before the pair, ere taking the offered chair from Dates, his aspect was eminently attractive.

There are certain ever-to-be-cherished moments in the life of almost any man, when a variety of little foregoing circumstances all unite to make him temporarily oblivious of whatever may be hard and bitter in his life, and also to make him most amiably and ruddily disposed; when the scene and company immediately before him are highly agreeable; and if at such a time he chance involuntarily to put himself into a scenically favorable bodily posture; then, in that posture, however transient, thou shalt catch the noble stature of his Bettor Angel; catch a heavenly glimpse of the latent heavenliness of man. It was so with Mr. Palsgrave now. Not a house within a circuit of fifty miles that he preferred entering before mansion-house of Saddle Meadows; and though the business upon which he had that morning come, was any thing but relishable to him, yet that subject was not in his memory then. Before him stood united in one person, the most exalted lady and the most storied beauty of all the country round; and the finest, most intellectual, and most congenial youth he knew. Before him also, stood the generous foundress and the untiring patroness of the beautiful little marble church, consecrated by the good Bishop, not four years gone by. Before him also, stood-though in polite disguise-the same untiring benefactress, from whose purse, he could not help suspecting, came a great part of his salary, nominally supplied by the rental of the pews. He had been invited to breakfast; a meal, which, in a well-appointed country family, is the most cheerful circumstance of daily life; he smelt all Java's spices in the aroma from the silver coffee-urn; and well he knew, what liquid deliciousness would soon come from it. Besides all this, and many more minutenesses of the kind, he was conscious that Mrs. Glendinning entertained a particular partiality for him (though not enough to marry him, as he ten times knew by very bitter experience), and that Pierre was not behindhand in his esteem.