es. Haward smiled, and spoke aloud to his
imaginary ghost.

"You need not strive for speech," he said. "I know what you would say.
_Was it for this I built this house, bought land and slaves?... Fair View
and Westover, Westover and Fair View. A lady that will not wed thee
because she loves thee! Zoons, Marmaduke! thou puttest me beside my
patience!... As for this other, set no nameless, barefoot wench where sat
thy mother! King Cophetua and the beggar maid, indeed! I warrant you
Cophetua was something under three-and-thirty!_"

Haward ceased to speak for his father, and sighed for himself. "Moral:
Three-and-thirty must be wiser in his day and generation." He rose from
his chair, and began to walk the room. "If not Cophetua, what then,--what
then?" Passing the table, he took up the miniature again. "The villain of
the piece, I suppose, Evelyn?" he asked.

The pure and pensive face seemed to answer him. He put the picture hastily
down, and recommenced his pacing to and fro. From the garden below came
the heavy odor of lilies, and the whisper of the river tried the nerves.
Haward went to the window, and, leaning out, looked, as now each night he
looked, up and across the creek toward the minister's house. To-night
there was no light to mark it; it was late, and all the world without his
room was in darkness. He sat down in the window seat, looked out upon the
stars and listened to the river. An hour had passed before he turned back
to the room, where the candles had burned low. "I will go to Westover
to-morrow," he said. "God knows, I should be a villain"--

He locked the picture of Evelyn within his desk, drank his wine and water,
and went to bed, strongly resolved upon retreat. In the morning he said,
"I will go to Westover this afternoon;" and in the afternoon he said, "I
will go to-morrow." When the morrow came, he found that the house lacked
but one day of being finished, and that there was therefore no need for
him to go at all.

Mistress Deborah was loath, enough to take leave of damask and mirrors and
ornaments of china,--the latter fine enough and curious enough to remind
her of Lady Squander's own drawing-room; but the leaf of paper which
Haward wrote upon, tore from his pocket-book, and gave her provided
consolation. Her thanks were very glib, her curtsy was very deep. She was
his most obliged, humble servant, and if she could serve him again he
would make her proud. Would he not, now, some day, row up creek