nswered Audrey. She held her
head up, but she felt the stab. It had not occurred to her that hers was
the power to vex and ruin; apparently that belonged elsewhere.

Evelyn turned from the window, and the two women, the princess and the
herdgirl, regarded each other. "Oh, my God!" cried Evelyn. "I did not know
that you loved him so!"

But Audrey shook her head, and spoke with calmness: "Once I loved and knew
it not, and once I loved and knew it. It was all in a dream, and now I
have waked up." She passed her hand across her brow and eyes, and pushed
back her heavy hair. It was a gesture that was common to her. To Evelyn it
brought a sudden stinging memory of the ballroom at the Palace; of how
this girl had looked in her splendid dress, with the roses in her hair; of
Haward's words at the coach door. She had not seen him since that night.
"I am going a long way," continued Audrey. "It will be as though I died. I
never meant to harm you."

The other gazed at her with wide, dry eyes, and with an unwonted color in
her cheeks. "She is beautiful," thought Audrey; then wondered how long she
must stay in this room and this house. Without the window the trees
beckoned, the light was fair upon the river; in the south hung a cloud,
silver-hued, and shaped like two mighty wings. Audrey, with her eyes upon
the cloud, thought, "If the wings were mine, I would reach the mountains
to-night."

"Do you remember last May Day?" asked Evelyn, in a voice scarcely above a
whisper. "He and I, sitting side by side, watched your running, and I
praised you to him. Then we went away, and while we gathered flowers on
the road to Williamsburgh he asked me to be his wife. I said no, for he
loved me not as I wished to be loved. Afterward, in Williamsburgh, he
spoke again.... I said, 'When you come to Westover;' and he kissed my
hand, and vowed that the next week should find him here." She turned once
more to the window, and, with her chin in her hand, looked out upon the
beauty of the autumn. "Day by day, and day by day," she said, in the same
hushed voice, "I sat at this window and watched for him to come. The weeks
went by, and he came not. I began to hear talk of you. Oh, I deny not that
it was bitter!"

"Oh me! oh me!" cried Audrey. "I was so happy, and I thought no harm."

"He came at last," continued Evelyn. "For a month he stayed here, paying
me court. I was too proud to speak of what I had heard. After a while I
thought it must have been