to-morrow night," he went on. "I must be
there, for a fair lady and I are to dance together." He smiled. "Poor
Audrey, who hath never been to a ball; who only dances with the elves,
beneath the moon, around a beechen tree! The next day I will go to Fair
View, and you will be at the glebe house, and we will take up the summer
where we left it, that weary month ago."

"No, no," said Audrey hurriedly, and shook her head. A vague and formless
trouble had laid its cold touch upon her heart; it was as though she saw a
cloud coming up, but it was no larger than a man's hand, and she knew not
what it should portend, nor that it would grow into a storm. He was
strange to-day,--that she felt; but then all her day since the coming of
Evelyn had been sad and strange.

The shaft of sunshine was gone from the stage, and all the house was in
shadow. Audrey descended the two or three steps leading into the pit, and
Haward followed her. Side by side they left the playhouse, and found
themselves in the garden, and also in the presence of five or six ladies
and gentlemen, seated upon the grass beneath a mulberry-tree, or engaged
in rifling the grape arbor of its purple fruit.

The garden was a public one, and this gay little party, having tired of
the Indian spectacle, had repaired hither to treat of its own affairs.
Moreover, it had been there, scattered upon the grass in view of the
playhouse door, for the better part of an hour. Concerned with its own wit
and laughter, it had caught no sound of low voices issuing from the
theatre; and for the two who talked within, all outward noise had ranked
as coming from the distant, crowded fields.

A young girl, her silken apron raised to catch the clusters which a
gentleman, mounted upon a chair, threw down, gave a little scream and let
fall her purple hoard. "'Gad!" cried the gentleman. One and another
exclaimed, and a withered beauty seated beneath the mulberry-tree laughed
shrilly.

A moment, an effort, a sharp recall of wandering thoughts, and Haward had
the situation in hand. An easy greeting to the gentlemen, debonair
compliments for the ladies, a question or two as to the entertainment they
had left, then a negligent bringing forward of Audrey. "A little brown
ward and ancient playmate of mine,--shot up in the night to be as tall as
a woman. Make thy curtsy, child, and go tell the minister what I have said
on the subject he wots of."

Audrey curtsied and went away, having never rais