PART I. (continued 2)

“The sooner the better, I think,” replied the young man with considerable spitefulness of emphasis. “There is, of course, much to be done.”

“But Aimée is too young to do anything with regard to business,” said Mrs. Berrien.

“Her mother is anxious to see her,” said Mr. Joscelyn—a statement which made Mrs. Berrien smile, and produced in Aimée a sense of deepening amazement—“and it is necessary that she should begin at once to prepare for the position she will occupy.”

“What will that be?” asked Mrs. Berrien, a little dryly. “Have you learned the amount of her fortune?”

“Not precisely; but the letters received from Rio speak of it as very large.”

“And so you are transformed into a South American heiress, my dear little Aimée?” said Mrs. Berrien, with a smile, putting her arm caressingly around the girl, who answered, between a laugh and a sob:

“I do not know what to think of myself under such a transformation.”

VIII.

If Aimée did not know what to think of herself under the transformation of her changed fortunes, those around her knew very well what to think. Never again would any act of hers be reckoned of no importance by the world, which, whatever shrines it may desert, is always faithful to that of the golden calf; and when Fanny Berrien learned that it was a great heiress whom she had sent to keep her rendezvous on the sea wall, and whose name she had, in the minds of two people at least, linked with that of Lennox Kyrle, she stood aghast at the realization.

“For, of course, since Aimée is to be such an important person, I have done her a great injustice,” she confessed to her mother. “I should never have sent her if I had not thought her too insignificant for it to matter; and the same consideration made me say what I did to Mr. Meredith. How could it harm Aimée, I thought! and now—”

A dramatic gesture concluded the sentence, but did not lighten the cloud on Mrs. Berrien’s brow. Indeed, Fanny said afterward that she had never seen her mother so angry as on this occasion.

“If the change of fortune had not occurred, and Aimée had remained as insignificant as you thought her, I should say that you were guilty of shameful and inexcusable conduct,” said Mrs. Berrien. “To send her—a child under my care—on an errand that might have compromised her even more than it has done; and then to shield yourself by placing her in a false position—I could not have believed you capable of it! And the question now is, what am I to do? I can not leave Aimée under the imputation of having been ready to elope with Lennox Kyrle.”

“I see no particular harm in the imputation,” said Fanny, “especially since Mr. Meredith is the only person who knows of it, and I will see that he holds his tongue.”

“You forget that Percy Joscelyn found Mr. Kyrle with Aimée.”

“And what then? He has only his suspicions of some love affair between them—and why should not Aimée be supposed to have a love affair? I had half a dozen at her age.”

“Fanny, I am ashamed of you!” said her mother, severely. “Is this a proper spirit in which to look at a matter in which you have been gravely and deeply at fault? Have you no generosity, that you are willing to let your young cousin bear the consequences of your frivolity?”

“It is her generosity that makes her willing to bear them,” said Fanny. “But if you insist, mamma, I can set the matter straight, so far as she is concerned, by telling Mr. Meredith the truth. Of course, he will never speak to me again, and I don’t clearly see how that will do any good to Aimée. But still, if you insist—”

“I suppose I ought to insist,” said Mrs. Berrien, in a low tone. “It is a shame if I do not. And yet—you have put me as well as Aimée in a position for which I shall never forgive you!” turning sharply to her daughter—“you have made it almost impossible for me to say what must be done. I should like to see you married to Mr. Meredith, but I shall always feel that such a marriage is bought too dearly if it can only be bought by putting your young cousin in a position which may throw a cloud over the brilliant prospects of her life.”

“Mamma, if you will excuse me, that is all nonsense!” said Fanny. “How can it possibly throw a cloud over Aimée’s prospects—which I heartily wish were mine!—that one or two or three people believe her to have had a youthful love affair with Lennox Kyrle? Lennox is a very nice person—though you would never believe it—and he may be a famous man some day.”

“It is you who are talking nonsense,” said Mrs. Berrien, curtly. “It is not necessary to discuss Mr. Kyrle. Fortunately, he is a gentleman—there is that much to be said for him; otherwise we will put him aside. You say that it can not injure Aimée’s prospects to be supposed by two or three people to have had a youthful love affair with him. In the first place, what is known to two or three people will certainly be known to many more; and, in the second place, it is a great injury to any girl, in the opinion of people whose opinions are worth consideration, to have had any such affair, much less to be supposed to have been on the verge of an elopement. As I have said, it would be bad enough if Aimée had remained insignificant; but now, with her prospects, I can not endure it!”

“Then my prospects are at an end, and I might as well bury myself at once!” cried Fanny, who began to fear that her mother was seriously in earnest. “It is not only that I shall lose Mr. Meredith—for of course there are as good fish in the sea as ever came out of it—but I shall be hopelessly compromised, and I can not even fall back upon Lennox Kyrle, for he has gone off in a rage, swearing that he is done with me forever. So you might as well make up your mind, mamma, that I shall be left on your hands.”

“Fanny, you distract me!” said her mother. “Do you propose that I shall let this thing go on, and suffer Aimée, who does not know what she is doing, to start in life with this story fastened upon her?”

“Aimée knows perfectly well what she is doing,” said Fanny, “and if she does not mind why should you? As for her changed position, when people have money they can do exactly what they please, and the world never dares to find fault. That is my experience. But here she comes herself. Ask her what she wishes. I promise to abide by her decision.”

It was indeed Aimée, who entered like an angel of peace. She never looked more childlike or gentle, yet her simplicity now as ever was the simplicity of good sense, and as she came forward she glanced appealingly from the anxious daughter to the distracted mother.

“I was in the next room; I could not help hearing, Aunt Alice,” she said. “I have come to thank you for thinking so much of me, and to beg you to let things be as they are.”

“My dear child, it is generous of you to desire it,” said Mrs. Berrien, “but I do not feel that I have a right to accept such a sacrifice. I must think of your future.”

“Have you not always thought of me?” said the girl, coming forward and in her earnestness kneeling down by her aunt’s chair. “You know, and I know, that nobody else has thought of me at all. And will you not let me repay you in the least for your kindness and your thought? It is such a little thing that I want you to let me do. Fanny is right. What difference does it make whether two or three people believe that I was going to elope with Mr. Kyrle? It can not hurt me; but if it were known of her it would hurt her very much. I saw Mr. Meredith this morning, and I am certain that he would never forgive her if he learned the truth now. It is too late. You can make things worse, Aunt Alice, but you can not make them any better now.”

Mrs. Berrien gave a little gasp. It was true, all that the simple, quiet voice said. Things might easily be made worse, but it was too late to make them better. She perceived this, and was not sorry to perceive it, even while despising herself for being convinced. But what could she do, with Fanny’s imploring eyes on one side, and on the other Aimée’s resolution?

“I ought not to yield,” she said. “Whether things were made better or worse, the truth should be told.”

“Oh, no; if the truth would do harm, instead of good, why should you tell it now?” said Aimée, with guileless casuistry. “I wanted Fanny to tell Mr. Meredith at first, but she would not, and now it is too late. You must let things be, dear Aunt Alice. Promise me that you will let them be.”

The insistent voice and eyes carried their point. Mrs. Berrien hesitated a moment longer, then meekly yielded.

“I am wrong, I know I am wrong,” she said, “but I can not withstand you both. Aimée, I shall never forgive myself if this throws any shadow of trouble on your life. Remember, if it ever does, and you wish the truth known, call upon me and I will tell it.”

Aimée shook her head, smiling.

“I am not afraid that the occasion will ever come,” she said. “I am too glad to be able to do something for you, who have done so much for me.”

IX.

But Mrs. Berrien was not the only person who felt concern about the very unjust suspicion that might be cast upon Aimée. Lennox Kyrle, as he went out, with Percy Joscelyn’s angry question ringing in his ears, said to himself, indignantly, that it was shameful that such a misconception should be allowed for a moment to exist, and that, if Fanny had neither the courage nor sense of justice sufficient to induce her to speak, it was his plain duty to do so. Only one consideration deterred him, and this was the consideration Aimée had so artfully brought to bear, that to reveal the truth would on his part appear to be the revenge of a jilted man.

“My lips are sealed,” he thought, wrathfully, “and Fanny Berrien knows it, so she allows this child, who is too young and ignorant to understand what she is doing, to bear the consequences and the odium of her conduct. It is infamous, and I will not submit to it! Something must be done.”

But to declare in the warmth of righteous indignation that something must be done, and to decide what that something should be, were unfortunately very different things. Mr. Kyrle felt himself impotent in the face of the double force of feminine resolution arrayed against him, and yet he was determined that matters should not be left as they were. The more he thought of it, the more he was revolted by Fanny Berrien’s selfishness and duplicity, and the more eager he became that she should be made to bear the burden of her own misdoing. But how was this to be accomplished? He walked away from Mrs. Shreve’s door after asking himself the question, and finding no answer short of that method which would be open to the suspicion of being dictated by revenge. One thing, however, he determined—that he would not leave St. Augustine at once, as he had declared his intention of doing. That Fanny Berrien very much desired his departure, was in his present mood an incentive to remain. Yes, he would stay for a day at least, and see if circumstances might not make it possible for him to set matters in their true light.

At the hotel where he had taken up his quarters—for this was before the era of palatial hostelries in the quaint old Spanish town—he saw Mr. Meredith and Percy Joscelyn, and might have been amused by the glances, not of love, which both men cast upon him, but for the fact that he clearly understood the misconception in the mind of each; and to be held guilty of tempting a girl hardly out of childhood to elopement, was as outraging to his pride as to his sense of integrity. It is to be regretted that he did not encounter Miss Berrien at this period, for that lively and easy-going young lady would assuredly have heard some truths, clothed in caustic language, which might have proved of benefit to her. But instead of Miss Berrien, it was Aimée whom he encountered again, in a manner most unexpected to both. One of the girl’s greatest pleasures during her stay in St. Augustine had been to spend much of her time in an orange grove on the outskirts of the town, to which she had a right of entrance, as it belonged to Mrs. Shreve’s son. Other people also went there occasionally to walk under the picturesque trees and pluck the golden fruit that gleamed out of the glossy foliage; but Aimée would take books or work with her, and spend hours alone in what seemed to her an enchanted world of soft sunshine, balmy air, and sweet odors. It was therefore a place that she felt she could not leave St. Augustine without seeing again—the more especially that, after the events of the morning and the tremendous change that seemed impending over her, she needed a little time for quiet reflection. And quiet reflection in the house with her aunt and Fanny was an impossible thing.

So it came to pass that, in the last hour of a perfect afternoon, Lennox Kyrle, who had been taking a walk while chewing the cud of unpleasant reflections, was attracted by the appearance of a figure coming along the road on which he was tramping. His sight was remarkably keen, and after an instant, although the person was still distant, he had no doubt who it was.

“It is that little girl!” he said to himself. “I call this good luck, for really the only thing I can do, as far as I perceive, is to make another appeal to her to tell the truth. Yet to go back to that house to see her was impossible. So it is surely a fortunate chance that brings her here—and alone, too!”

The next moment he feared that he had congratulated himself too soon. The figure paused an instant and then disappeared. Had she also recognized him, and desired to avoid meeting him? He thought it likely, but determined grimly that she should not succeed. Since to reach Fanny and scorch her with reproaches was impossible, his next best chance was to work upon Aimée, and this he vowed to himself that he would not be prevented from doing. If she had gone into some house, he would remain on the road until nightfall in order to waylay her on her return home; but if she had perhaps taken another road—The suspicion of this made him quicken his steps, so that a few minutes after Aimée’s disappearance he reached the spot where he had seen her last. No house was in sight, but it was evident that she had entered a gate which led into an orange grove, the beautiful alleys of which he had admired as he passed it on his way out an hour before. Indeed, as he gazed eagerly and quickly down the green vistas filled with sunset light he perceived what he sought—the graceful form pacing slowly along one of the overarched ways.

To decide and to act was more a synonymous thing with Lennox Kyrle than with most men. He did not give a thought to any question of intrusion or trespass. He opened the gate and went in, striding quickly down the path in which he perceived the slender, girlish figure. He was not conscious at the moment of bestowing much attention upon the scene around him, but its aspect came back to him so vividly afterward, that the sensitive plate which we call memory must have retained it with unusual fidelity. Long afterward he could see distinctly the floods of level sunlight slanting through the tree-trunks and turning the very air to amber, the wealth of glistening evergreen foliage, the boughs laden with what seemed the golden apples of classic fable, the indefinable charm of the Southern atmosphere, and above all the delicate, childlike presence like a vision of youth flitting down the sunlit vista.

But if there was a satisfaction to him in thus finding an opportunity to deliver the thoughts which had turned so hotly within him all day, there was not the least satisfaction for poor Aimée, when, hearing a quick tread advancing behind her, she turned to confront the last person in the world whom she had the least desire to see. She stood still, clasping her hands instinctively together as she uttered a low cry of dismay.

“O Mr. Kyrle!” she gasped. “I hoped—I thought you had gone away.”

Little as Kyrle was in a mood for smiling, he could not but smile at this ingenuous address. “I am sorry to disappoint you,” he said, “and to break my word—for I promised to go, didn’t I? But there are reasons that seemed to make it imperative for me to remain a little longer. And, as it chanced just now, while I was taking a walk, I saw you enter this place, and I hoped you would pardon me if I followed you.”

“But why?” inquired Aimée, far too disturbed to be polite. “Why should you want to see me, and why—oh, why haven’t you gone away? Fanny would be dreadfully worried if she knew you were still here.”

“What Miss Berrien might think does not trouble me in the least,” he replied, quietly; “but I am sorry to annoy you. I really did not think, however, that merely seeing me would annoy you so much. Why should it? I have no intention of harming any one.”

“Without intention you may do great harm,” she replied, quickly. “And I can not understand why you should stay, when you promised—”

“I will tell you why,” he said as she paused. “But is there no place where we can sit down for a few minutes? I will not detain you long.”

She pointed to a bench not far off, a favorite seat of her own, and one to which she had been on her way when he overtook her. “We can sit down there,” she said, with manifest reluctance, “but I do not see the necessity—”

“Never mind seeing it,” he said. “Simply oblige me—if I must put the matter on that basis. I am sure you will admit that I have been badly enough treated to merit a little consideration.”

“You have certainly been very badly treated,” said Aimée, her eyes softening with sympathy at the memory of his wrongs. “I hope you don’t think I forget it, or that I can ever cease to blame Fanny; but—but making things worse can not make them better. And it seems to me that you can only make them worse by staying here.”

“As far as Miss Berrien is concerned,” he said, as they walked toward the bench and seated themselves, “I assure you that I have not the least desire to make them either worse or better. It seems strange—does it not?”—he broke off abruptly, “that this time yesterday I was looking at the setting sun filled with thoughts of her, and longings for the moment that would bring us together, and that now there is not a woman whom I know in the world that I would not sooner entertain the thought of marrying. It is a great change to be wrought in twenty-four hours. And do you know what has chiefly wrought it?”

“Her conduct, I suppose,” answered Aimée. “It was bad enough to have wrought anything; and yet,” she added, reflectively, “I don’t really believe that Fanny herself thinks it was very bad. She is—light, you know.”

“Yes,” assented Kyrle, dryly, “very light. However, what she thinks is a matter of no importance. And it is not her conduct to me that has chiefly wrought the change of which I speak, but her conduct to you.”

“To me?” said Aimée, looking up at him with a startled expression. “Oh, pray, don’t think of that. You don’t understand—Fanny never meant to do me any harm. I was perfectly willing to go last night, and it was not her fault that Mr. Meredith, instead of going home, as he should have done, stayed on the sea wall and saw me.”

“Pardon me,” said Kyrle, “but I think it was distinctly her fault. To have sent you on such an errand was in itself absolutely inexcusable; but afterward to let it be supposed that you went of your own accord—that you were the person about to elope—there is no language strong enough to characterize such cowardly duplicity. You wonder why I am still here? It is because I determined to see you, and say to you that if you do not tell the truth, I will. This shameful deception, this trading on the generosity of a child, shall not continue.”

Aimée looked up at him. When had she seen any one so moved with indignation and generous wrath? She thought again that this man was far from the ductile wax Fanny Berrien imagined him to be; but, righteous as his resentment and anger were, it would not do to allow him to act upon them. Yet how could she hope to influence or bend the fiery resolution that breathed in his look and words?

“It is too late,” she said at last. “I have promised, and I have made others promise, that things shall be left as they are, and nothing would induce me to speak. Fanny is selfish and thoughtless, but she never intended deception. It all—came about because Mr. Meredith frightened her, and she was afraid to tell the truth. Fanny is a little of a coward, you know. She is very sorry—really sorry, I assure you; but if she told Mr. Meredith now, he would never forgive her.”

“And so you advise her to continue to deceive a man whose affection for her should entitle him at least to fair dealing?” said Kyrle, bitterly. “Is a man, then, never certain of truth from a woman? In Fanny Berrien I am not surprised. But your eyes look as if you ought to know what honor and honesty are.”

The eyes of which he spoke filled with tears. No other reproach could have cut Aimée so deeply. Twenty-four hours earlier she would have said that honor and honesty were the forces that would always rule her life; and now—she could not deny that from this high standard she had ignominiously fallen. And how was it possible to explain what compelling impulse of gratitude had made it seem a duty to violate the strongest instincts implanted in her nature? She looked at Kyrle with the overbrimming crystal drops almost ready to fall, and he, meeting the pained humility of that look, felt as if he had struck a helpless child.

“I suppose it was wrong to have helped Fanny when it came to a question of deception,” she said, “but you do not know how unkind and ungrateful it would have seemed of me to refuse. It looked such a little thing—just to say that it was I whom Mr. Meredith saw last night. And that was true. Oh, yes” (quickly), “I know that it is as bad to imply a falsehood as to tell it. But—but what could I do? I owe so much to my aunt!”

“I have no right to hold you to account,” said Kyrle. “Only let me ask if you think it possible to owe any debt of gratitude great enough to demand a sacrifice of integrity in payment?”

“I don’t know,” she answered, simply. “I am sorry if I have done anything very wrong, but I will tell you why I felt compelled to make almost any sacrifice to shield Fanny.” She hesitated a moment. It seemed a difficult subject to approach, and Kyrle was about to beg her not to distress herself in order to give him an explanation to which he had no claim, when she went on hastily: “You see, I am only partly an orphan. My father is dead, but my mother is living and has married again. She is very much under the influence of Major Joscelyn—that is my stepfather—and I have always felt, though perhaps I was wrong, that she does not care much about me. The Joscelyns have never liked me; so I was very unhappy at home, when Aunt Alice came and took me away. I can not tell you how different life was to me when I went to live with her and Fanny. They have both been so kind and affectionate, they have done so much for me, of whom no one else ever thought at all, that there is not anything—not anything,” repeated the passionate young voice, “that I would not do for them. And I can not regret what I have done, though I am sorry it seems to you so wrong.”

“It is chiefly wrong to yourself,” said Kyrle. “I wish I could make you see this as I do. It is not less than a crime against your future to allow people to suppose—for what one person knows, many people are pretty certain to know—that you were not only engaged in a love affair, but on the point of eloping with me last night.”

A deep blush, beautiful in its tint but painful in its intensity, spread over her face. She looked away from him and her lip trembled. He saw that some instinct which had been dormant before was waking in her, and making her understand the outrage which such a misconception would do her childlike youth, and he pressed his advantage remorselessly.

“You can not possibly comprehend what injury the story might do your life at some of its most critical moments,” he said; “but your aunt, Mrs. Berrien, will comprehend, and to her I shall go. I am deeply enough concerned in the matter to have a right to demand that the truth shall be told.”

“If you go to my aunt,” said Aimée, turning upon him quickly, “you can distress her very much, but you can not tell her anything which she does not know. All that you have said about possible injury to me she has said and I had much trouble in persuading her to let things be as they are. You must not think any wrong of her. She knew nothing until Percy Joscelyn, my stepbrother—who came in, you remember, this morning—charged her with not having taken proper care of me, because he found you in Mrs. Shreve’s sitting-room with me. It was like his effrontery to dare to speak so to her!” the girl interpolated, with flashing eyes. “Yesterday no Joscelyn of them all would have cared what became of me; only Aunt Alice cared. But to-day, because it seems they have learned that I am rich, Percy ventures to insult her!”

Nothing could have surprised Kyrle more than this sudden flash of indignant anger in one who had seemed to him gentle to a fault. But he was a man of quick perceptions, and all the intense affectionateness, the passionate gratitude and loyalty of the girl’s nature, were revealed to him in that moment of emotion. He was deeply touched and interested, for in this instant he understood that it was no vulgar love of intrigue, no lack of rectitude, no obtuseness toward the finest things of life, that had made Aimée play her part in Fanny Berrien’s commonplace comedy of flirtation. Instead of comedy it had become tragedy to the girl, with her keen sense of honor, her high standard of loyalty, and her delicate instinct of the claim which love and trust given create in a generous mind. But there were motives, deep-rooted in her nature, strong enough to make her do violence to all these things and stand firm as Fanny’s shield. Kyrle almost forgot the point he was himself intent upon in his interest in the springs of feeling and action thus laid bare before him.

“And so,” Aimée went on, “when Aunt Alice heard that you had been there she knew, of course, what it meant, and she insisted on hearing everything. Then she said the truth must be told; that Mr. Meredith must know why I went out last night; that now I am rich—why are things so much more important when people happen to be rich?—it would not do for any one to imagine that I had been going to elope. But Fanny said that Mr. Meredith would never forgive her if he heard the truth now, and I begged Aunt Alice on my knees to let me do this little thing in return for all she has done for me. So at last she yielded, and I was very glad, and—and it can not be that you will go to her and make more trouble. Why should you concern yourself about me?” she demanded, turning to him with another but somewhat lesser flash in her eyes. “What is it to you if I do this?”

“Well, for one thing,” replied Kyrle, “I am myself somewhat concerned in it, for I assure you that I am not the kind of man to endeavor to persuade a girl of your age to elope, and naturally the imputation of having done so is not very agreeable to me.”

“Oh!” said Aimée, with a look of contrition, “I never thought of that. I forgot that it could not be pleasant for you to be suspected of such a thing. You must forgive me for being so selfish; and yet”—she paused an instant and gazed at him with a passion of entreaty in her eyes, which at that moment he thought were at once the most expressive and the most beautiful he had ever seen—“and yet,” she went on in a low, thrilling tone, “if you could only be generous and kind enough to allow it to be believed of you by the only person who knows anything about it, I, for one, should be grateful to you as long as I live!”

But for the gravity of her appeal Kyrle could have laughed at the absurdity of the situation; and yet her simplicity, her utter lack of thought for herself, touched him again beyond measure. “My dear child,” he said—for in truth he did not recall her name—“I feel as if I might do almost anything, simply because you wished it; but you do not know what you ask in this matter. You tell me that you have become rich, which means important in the world, and yet you desire to darken the fair promise of your youth with such a story as this would speedily become in the mouth of gossip. It is impossible—it would be a shame! I can not consent to it.”

“But what can you do?” she asked, dropping appeal and regarding him now with nothing less than defiance in her dark eyes. “Is it not true that a gentleman is bound never to betray a woman’s secret? How, then, can you betray Fanny’s? As for me, I will never speak.”

There was no doubt of that. A hundred oaths could not have expressed resolution more firmly, more immovably, than those simple words. And what could Kyrle reply? He knew well that he could not betray Miss Berrien’s secret, and it was the consciousness of this that had made him so determined to influence Aimée. But now he was forced to own himself completely baffled. Aimée’s strength of will was greater than any force he could bring to bear against it, and there was nothing left but to accept the situation created for him as best he might.

“You are right,” he said at last. “A gentleman is bound in honor to keep a woman’s secret; so Miss Berrien is safe from me. If she chooses to shelter herself behind you, and you choose to allow her to do so, I have no power to prevent it. But I am sorry that I have failed completely to make you understand what a great mistake you are committing. To save an unprincipled flirt from the consequences of her double-dealing, you are laying a cloud on your own life at its beginning.”

“I care nothing about that,” said the girl, with honest indifference. “I am only sorry that Mr. Meredith should be deceived, and that you have to bear (though only in his opinion) that imputation of which you spoke a few minutes ago. But I am going away to-morrow; and since it seems I am of some importance now” (a sigh), “I suppose the Joscelyns will keep me always; so he and everybody else will soon forget all about this.”

“I assure you that I shall never forget it,” said Kyrle. “It is an episode calculated to remain in a man’s memory. The heartless, selfish woman who has made a fool of me, I shall indeed have no trouble in forgetting; but the part you have played, mistaken as it is, I shall long remember. I only wish you had displayed such qualities as you have proved yourself to possess, in a better cause. Given a good cause, you would be a heroine. And now”—he rose as he spoke—“this time it is good-by. Since I have failed completely in the end for which I remained here, I shall return at once to the yacht. Will you shake hands with me and tell me your name? One should surely know as much as that of a young lady with whom he is supposed to have nearly eloped.”

But Aimée could not jest on such a subject. She gravely told him her name and put out her hand. For long he carried with him a picture of the slender presence, the delicate face looking wistfully into his, as if to make sure that this time he could be relied upon to depart, and the golden sunset glory seen through the orange boughs behind her.

“Good-by,” he said, gently. “I am sorry I have not moved you. Some day you will see that I am right, and I only hope you will not then too much regret that you did not follow my advice.”

He pressed her hand warmly, released it, and walked away, down the green vista of the grove.