al. "I'll see to the dinner,
child. Mr. Haward will expect one of us to sit without, and you had as
well go as I. If he's talking to Darden, you might get some larkspur and
gilliflowers for the table. La! the flowers that used to wither beneath
the candles at my Lady Squander's!"

Audrey, finding the two men in conversation beneath the apple-tree, passed
on to the ragged garden, where clumps of hardy, bright-colored flowers
played hide-and-seek with currant and gooseberry bushes. Haward saw her
go, and broke the thread of his discourse. Darden looked up, and the eyes
of the two men met; those of the younger were cold and steady. A moment,
and his glance had fallen to his watch which he had pulled out. "'Tis
early yet," he said coolly, "and I dare say not quite your dinner
time,--which I beg that Mistress Deborah will not advance on my account.
Is it not your reverence's habit to rest within doors after your sermon?
Pray do not let me detain you. I will go talk awhile with Audrey."

He put up his watch and rose to his feet. Darden cleared his throat. "I
have, indeed, a letter to write to Mr. Commissary, and it may be half an
hour before Deborah has dinner ready. I will send your servant to fetch
you in."

Haward broke the larkspur and gilliflowers, and Audrey gathered up her
apron and filled it with the vivid blooms. The child that had thus brought
loaves of bread to a governor's table spread beneath a sugar-tree, with
mountains round about, had been no purer of heart, no more innocent of
rustic coquetry. When her apron was filled she would have returned to the
house, but Haward would not have it so. "They will call when dinner is
ready," he said. "I wish to talk to you, little maid. Let us go sit in the
shade of the willow yonder."

It was almost a twilight behind the cool green rain of the willow boughs.
Through that verdant mist Haward and Audrey saw the outer world but dimly.
"I had a fearful dream last night," said Audrey. "I think that that must
have been why I was to glad to see you come into church to-day. I dreamed
that you had never come home again, overseas, in the Golden Rose. Hugon
was beside me, in the dream, telling me that you were dead in England: and
suddenly I knew that I had never really seen you; that there was no
garden, no terrace, no roses, no _you_. It was all so cold and sad, and
the sun kept growing smaller and smaller. The woods, too, were black, and
the wind cried in them so that I was afr