m. "I came to make sure that
you were not harsh with the poor creature," said Evelyn's pitying voice.
"There is so much misery. Where is she? Ah!"

To gain at last his prisoner's attention, the constable struck her lightly
across the shoulders with his cane. "Get up!" he cried impatiently. "Get
up and make your curtsy! Ecod, I wish I'd left you in Hunter's Pond!"

Audrey rose, and turned her face, not to the justice of the peace and
arbiter of the fate of witches, but to Evelyn, standing above
her,--Evelyn, slighter, paler, than she had been at Williamsburgh, but
beautiful in her colored, fragrant silks and the air that was hers of
sweet and mournful distinction. Now she cried out sharply, while "That
girl again!" swore the Colonel, beneath his breath.

Audrey did as she had been told, and made her curtsy. Then, while father
and daughter stared at her, the gentleman very red and biting his lip, the
lady marble in her loveliness, she tried to speak, to ask them to let her
go, but found no words. The face of Evelyn, at whom alone she looked,
wavered into distance, gazing at her coldly and mournfully from miles
away. She made a faint gesture of weariness and despair; then sank down at
Evelyn's feet, and lay there in a swoon.

CHAPTER XXV

TWO WOMEN

Evelyn, hearing footsteps across the floor of the attic room above her own
bedchamber, arose and set wide the door; then went back to her chair by
the window that looked out upon green grass and party-colored trees and
long reaches of the shining river. "Come here, if you please," she called
to Audrey, as the latter slowly descended the stair from the room where,
half asleep, half awake, she had lain since morning.

Audrey entered the pleasant chamber, furnished with what luxury the age
afforded, and stood before the sometime princess of her dreams. "Will you
not sit down?" asked Evelyn, in a low voice, and pointed to a chair.

"I had rather stand," answered Audrey. "Why did you call me? I was on my
way"--

The other's clear eyes dwelt upon her. "Whither were you going?"

"Out of your house," said Audrey simply, "and out of your life."

Evelyn folded her hands in her silken lap, and looked out upon river and
sky and ceaseless drift of colored leaves. "You can never go out of my
life," she said. "Why the power to vex and ruin was given you I do not
know, but you have used it. Why did you run away from Fair View?"

"That I might never see Mr. Haward again," a