All through the night Mona scarcely shuts her eyes, so full is her mind of troubled and perplexing thoughts. At last her brain grows so tired that she cannot pursue any subject to its end, so she lies silently awake, watching for the coming of the dawn.  
At last, as she grows weary for wishing for it,—
 
"Morning fair
Comes with pilgrim steps in amice gray"
and light breaks through and curtain, and objects pale and ghostly at first soon grow large and intimate.
 
"Brown night retires; young day pours in apace,
And opens all a lawny wide."
Naturally an early riser, Mona slips noiselessly from her bed, lest she shall wake Geoffrey,—who is still sleeping the sleep of the just,—and, going into his dressing-room, jumps into his bath, leaving hers for him.
 
The general bath-room is to Geoffrey an abomination; nothing would induce him to enter it. His own bath, and nothing but his own bath, can content him. To have to make uncomfortable haste to be first, or else to await shivering the good pleasure of your next-door neighbor, is according to Mr. Rodney, a hardship too great for human endurance.
 
Having her toilet without the assistance of a maid (who would bore her to death), and without disturbing her lord and master, she leaves her room, and, softly the stairs, bids the maid in the hall below a "fair good-morning," and bears no in that the said maid is so by her unexpected appearance that she forgets to give her back her greeting. She her usual bonnie smile upon this stricken girl, and then, passing by her, opens the hall door, and sallies forth into the gray and early morning.
 
"The first low fluttering breath of waking day
Stirs the wide air. Thin clouds of pearly
Float slowly o'er the sky, to meet the rays
Of the unrisen sun."
But which way to go? To Mona all round is an undiscovered country, and for that reason possesses an indiscribable charm. Finally, she goes up the avenue, beneath the gaunt and leafless elms, and midway, seeing a path that leads she knows not whither, she turns aside and follows it until she loses herself in the lonely wood.
 
The air is full of death and desolation. It is cold and raw, and no of vegetation is anywhere. In the distance, indeed, she can see some fir-trees that alone show green amidst a of brown, and are hailed with by the eye, tired of the gray and monotony. But except for these all is dull and unfruitful.
 
Still, Mona is happy: the walk has done her good, and warmed her blood, and brought a color soft and rich as , to her cheeks. She has followed the path for about an hour, briskly, and with a sense of bien-etre that only the young and godly can know, when suddenly she becomes aware that some one was following her.
 
She turns slowly, and finds her fellow-pedestrian is a young man clad in a suit of very impossible tweed: she blushes hotly, not because he is a young man, but because she has no hat on her head, having covered her somewhat hair with a silk handkerchief she had found in Geoffrey's room, just before starting. It covers her head completely, and is tied under the chin Connemara fashion, letting only a few little love-locks be seen, that roam across her forehead, in spite of all injunctions to the contrary.
 
Perhaps, could she only know how charmingly becoming this style of headdress is to her flower-like face, she would not have blushed at all.
 
The stranger is advancing slowly: he is swarthy, and certainly not prepossessing. His hair is of that shade and that suggests unpleasantly the negro. His lips are a trifle thick, his eyes like sloes. There is, too, an expression of low cunning in these latter features that breeds disgust in the .
 
He does not see Mona until he is within a yard of her, a thick bush between him and her. Being always a creature of impulse, she has stood still on seeing him, and is lost in wonder as to who he can be. One hand is lifting up her gown, the other is holding together the large soft white fleecy shawl that covers her shoulders, and is therefore necessarily laid upon her breast. Her attitude is as as it is adorable.
 
The stranger, having come quite near, raises his head, and, seeing her, starts naturally, and also comes to a standstill. For a full half-minute he stares unpardonably, and then lifts his hat. Mona—who, as we have seen, is not great in emergencies—fails to notice the rudeness, in her own , and therefore bows politely in return to his salutation.
 
She is still wondering who he can be, when he breaks the silence.
 
"It is an early hour to be astir," he says, awkwardly; then, finding she makes no response, he goes on, still more awkwardly. "Can you tell me if this path will lead me to the road for Plumston?"
 
Plumston is a village near. The first remark may sound Too free and easy, but his manner is decorous in the extreme. In spite of the fact that her pretty head is ............