wave, without the window: to the shadows, the
stillness, and the sorrow within the room. Evelyn, turning slowly toward
the kneeling figure, of a sudden saw it through a mist of tears. Her
clasped hands parted; she bent and touched the bowed head. Audrey looked
up, and her dark eyes made appeal. Evelyn stooped lower yet; her tears
fell upon Audrey's brow; a moment, and the two, cast by life in the
selfsame tragedy, were in each other's arms.

"You know that I came from the mountains," whispered Audrey. "I am going
back. You must tell no one; in a little while I shall be forgotten."

"To the mountains!" cried Evelyn. "No one lives there. You would die of
cold and hunger. No, no! We are alike unhappy: you shall stay with me here
at Westover."

[Illustration: HER DARK EYES MADE APPEAL]

She rose from her knees, and Audrey rose with her. They no longer clasped
each other,--that impulse was past,--but their eyes met in sorrowful
amity. Audrey shook her head. "That may not be," she said simply. "I must
go away that we may not both be unhappy." She lifted her face to the cloud
in the south, "I almost died last night. When you drown, there is at first
fear and struggling, but at last it is like dreaming, and there is a
lightness.... When that came I thought, 'It is the air of the
mountains,--I am drawing near them.' ... Will you let me go now? I will
slip from the house through the fields into the woods, and none will
know"--

But Evelyn caught her by the wrist. "You are beside yourself! I would
rouse the plantation; in an hour you would be found. Stay with me!"

A knock at the door, and the Colonel's secretary, a pale and grave young
man, bowing on the threshold. He was just come from the attic room, where
he had failed to find the young woman who had been lodged there that
morning. The Colonel, supposing that by now she was recovered from her
swoon and her fright of the night before, and having certain questions to
put to her, desired her to descend to the parlor. Hearing voices in
Mistress Evelyn's room--

"Very well, Mr. Drew," said the lady. "You need not wait. I will myself
seek my father with--with our guest."

In the parlor Madam Byrd was yet at the harpsichord, but ceased to touch
the keys when her step-daughter, followed by Darden's Audrey, entered the
room. The master of Westover, seated beside his young wife, looked quickly
up, arched his brows and turned somewhat red, as his daughter, with her
gliding step