The elder ladies had floated away together between the mossy stems, under the canopies of blossoms; Rowland had fallen behind and joined the waiting Amanda, and the two were now flitting about like moths in the moonshine; Dorothy and Dr. Bayly had halted in an open spot, like a moonlight impluvium, the divine talking eagerly to the maiden, and the maiden looking up at the moon, and heeding the nightingales more than the divine.

‘Can they be English nightingales?’ said Dorothy thoughtfully.

The doctor was bewildered for a moment.  He had been talking about himself, not the nightingales, but he recovered himself like a gentleman.

‘Assuredly, mistress Dorothy,’ he replied; ’this is the land of their birth.  Hither they come again when the winter is over.’

’Yes; they take no part in our troubles.  They will not sing to comfort our hearts in the cold; but give them warmth enough, and they sing as careless of battle-fields and dead men as if they were but moonlight and apple-blossoms.’

‘Is it not better so?’ returned the divine after a moment’s thought.  ‘How would it be if everything in nature but re-echoed our moan?’

Dorothy looked at the little man, and was in her turn a moment silent.

‘Then,’ she said, ’we must see in these birds and blossoms, and that great blossom in the sky, so many prophets of a peaceful time and a better country, sent to remind us that we pass away and go to them.’

‘Nay, my dear mistress Dorothy!’ returned the all but obsequious doctor; ’such thoughts do not well befit your age, or rather, I would say, your youth.  Life is before you, and life is good.  These evil times will go by, the king shall have his own again, the fanatics will be scourged as they deserve, and the church will rise like the phoenix from the ashes of her purification.’

’But how many will lie out in the fields all the year long, yet never see blossoms or hear nightingales more!’ said Dorothy.

‘Such will have died martyrs,’ rejoined the doctor.

‘On both sides?’ suggested Dorothy.

Again for a moment the good man stood checked.  He had not even thought of the dead on the other side.

‘That cannot be,’ he said.  And Dorothy looked up again at the moon.

But she listened no more to the songs of the nightingales, and they left the orchard together in silence.

‘Come, Rowland, we must not be found here alone,’ said Amanda, who saw them go.  ’But tell me one thing first:  is mistress Dorothy Vaughan indeed your cousin?’

‘She is indeed.  Her mother and mine were cousins german—­sisters’ children.’

’I thought it could not be a near cousinship.  You are not alike at all.  Hear me, Rowland, but let it die in your ear—­I love not mistress Dorothy.’

’And the reason, lovely hater?  “Is not the maiden fair to see?” as the old song says.  I do not mean that she is fair as some are fair, but she will pass; she offends not.’