ite shore, and many
other evidences of the drowsy summer's unwillingness to leave the
embrace of this seductive land; the dreamy quietude of birds; the
spreading, folding, re-expanding and slow pulsating of the
all-prevailing fan (how like the unfolding of an angel's wing is
ofttimes the broadening of that little instrument!); the oft-drawn
handkerchief; the pale, cool colors of summer costume; the swallow,
circling and twittering overhead or darting across the sight; the
languid movement of foot and hand; the reeking flanks and foaming bits
of horses; the ear-piercing note of the cicada; the dancing butterfly;
the dog, dropping upon the grass and looking up to his master with
roping jaw and lolling tongue; the air sweetened with the merchandise of
the flower _marchandes_.

On the levee road, bridles and saddles, whips, gigs, and
carriages,--what a merry coming and going! We look, perforce, toward the
old bench where, six months ago, sat Joseph Frowenfeld. There is
somebody there--a small, thin, weary-looking man, who leans his bared
head slightly back against the tree, his thin fingers knit together in
his lap, and his chapeau-bras pressed under his arm. You note his
extreme neatness of dress, the bright, unhealthy restlessness of his
eye, and--as a beam from the sun strikes them--the fineness of his short
red curls. It is Doctor Keene.

He lifts his head and looks forward. Honore and Frowenfeld are walking
arm-in-arm under the furthermost row of willows. Honore is speaking. How
gracefully, in correspondence with his words, his free arm or
hand--sometimes his head or even his lithe form--moves in quiet gesture,
while the grave, receptive apothecary takes into his meditative mind, as
into a large, cool cistern, the valued rain-fall of his friend's
communications. They are near enough for the little doctor easily to
call them; but he is silent. The unhappy feel so far away from the
happy. Yet--"Take care!" comes suddenly to his lips, and is almost
spoken; for the two, about to cross toward the Place d'Armes at the very
spot where Aurora had once made her narrow escape, draw suddenly back,
while the black driver of a volante reins up the horse he bestrides, and
the animal himself swerves and stops.

The two friends, though startled apart, hasten with lifted hats to the
side of the volante, profoundly convinced that one, at least, of its two
occupants is heartily sorry that they were not rolled in the dust. Ah,
ah! wit