and and his wife, galloped off to home and bed. The
commonalty and the hangers-on faded too into the darkness, and the folk
who were sleeping at the inn took their candles and said good-night.
All was suddenly quiet,--a moonlit crossroads in Virginia, tranquil as
the shaven fields and the endless columns of the pine.

Upstairs, in the low "best room," Rand found his wife still seated by
the open window, her folded arms upon the sill, her eyes raised to the
stars that shone despite the moon. He crossed to her and closed the
window. "The night is cold. Dearest, have you been sitting here all this
time?"

She rose, turning upon him a radiant face. "All this time. I was not
cold. I was warm. I am so happy that I'm frightened."

"Did you like it?" he asked. "I hoped that you would. I thought of
you--my star, my happiness!"

"I used to wonder," she said; "when they would come home to Fontenoy and
say, 'Lewis Rand spoke to-day,' I used to wonder if I should ever hear
you speak! And when they blamed you I said to my aching heart, 'They
need not tell me! He's not ambitious, self-seeking, a leveller, a
demagogue and Jacobin!-he is the man I met beneath the apple tree!' And
I was right--I was right!"

"Am I that man?" he asked. "I will try to be, Jacqueline. Leveller,
demagogue, and Jacobin I am not; but for the rest, who knows--who knows?
Men are cloudy worlds--and I dream sometimes of a Pursuer."

The next morning the skies had changed, and Rand and Jacqueline fared
forward through a sodden, grey, and windy day. The rain had ceased to
fall when at twilight they came into Richmond by the Broad Street Road.
Lights gleamed from the wet houses; high overhead grey clouds were
parting, and in the west was a line of red. The wind was high, and the
sycamores with which the town abounded rocked their speckled arms. The
river was swollen and rolled hoarsely over the rocks beneath the red
west. Rand had taken a house on Shockoe Hill, not far from the Chief
Justice's, and to this he and Jacqueline came through the wet and windy
freshness of the night. Smiling in the doorway were the servants--Joab
and Mammy Chloe and Hannah--who had set out from Albemarle the day
before their master and mistress. Rand and Jacqueline, leaving the
mud-splashed chaise, were welcomed with loquacity and ushered into a
cheerful room where there was a crackling fire and a loaded table.

"Mrs. Leigh's compliments, Miss Jacqueline, an' she done sont de rolls.