n. He wouldn't think of interfering with
an ordinance of his overseers. I esteem his thoroughness. He has ideas.
But I might have said that he is a remarkable man."

"There'll be some pulling of caps soon, Hazel said to-day, in her
gibberish. I couldn't think what she meant."

"Blue Bluffs is a place to be mistress of. He's a woman-hater, though,
Mr. Marlboro',--believes in no woman capable of resisting him when he
flings the handkerchief, should he choose, but believes in none worth
choosing."

"We shall have to invite him here, Mrs. Arles," said Eloise,
mischievously, "and show him that there are two of us."

"That would never do!"

"Oh, I didn't mean so. Of course, I didn't mean so. How could I see any
one else sitting in"--And there were tears in her eyes and on her
trembling tones.

"My dear," said Mrs. Arles, "I am afraid, _apropos_ of nothing at all,
that you have isolated yourself from all society for too long a time
already."

Just here Hazel entered and replenished the hearth, stopping half-way,
with her armful of brush, to coquet an instant in the mirror, and adjust
the scarlet love-knot in her curls.

"There's a carriage coming up the avenue, Miss," said she, demurely.
"One of the boys"--

"What one?" asked Mrs. Arles.

"Vane," answered Hazel,--carmine staining her pretty olive cheek. "He
ran before it."

"Who can it be, at this hour?" said Eloise, half rising, with the pen in
her hand, and looking at Mrs. Arles, who did not stir.

As she spoke, there was a bustle in the hall, a slamming door, a voice
of command, the door opened, and a stranger stood among them, surveying
the long antique room with its diamonded windows flickering in every
pane, and the quaint hearth, whose leaping, crackling, fragrant blaze
lighted the sombre little person sitting beside it, and sparkled on the
half-bending form of that strange dark-haired girl, with her aquamarine
eyes bent full on his. He was wrapped, from head to foot, in a great
sweeping brigand's cloak, and a black, wide-brimmed hat, that had for an
instant slouched its shadow down his face, hung now in his gloved hand.
Dropping cloak and hat upon a chair with an invisible motion, he
advanced, an air of surprise lifting the heavy eyebrows so that they
strongly accented the contrast in hue between the lower half of his
face, tanned with wind and sun, and the wide, low brow, smooth as marble
itself, and above which swept one great wave of dark-brown hair.