riously, but I
hardly noticed them. I felt as if I were outside of all the world, and
everything usual that could happen.

The wind was freshening, picking up whitecaps on the bay, and presently
I noticed that the lugger had shifted her position, had moved out a
little from under the lea of the hill, and I saw they were running up
sail on board. One large flapping white wing, and then another, rose
and spread beyond the trees. I could even hear the piping sound of the
sailors' voices; and then, with a veering and a tilting, and finally
with a graceful bowing motion, she stood away from the hill and began
to go out to sea.

Beautiful sight that it was I looked at it with despair. I could not
believe it. How had the Spanish Woman got on board without my seeing
her? Could she have slipped along through the bewildering shadows and
so evaded me; or had she gone on board even before I had come? but, no,
that couldn't be, for then the lugger could have sailed immediately, I
thought, as I stood on the step of the carriage and watched the ship
carrying my last hope swing round and dip her nose deep in the channel
tide.

"There is only one chance," I said to myself. "Perhaps she will have
left some word for him behind her at the house."

The thought had no sooner come into my mind than it possessed me with
the conviction that this must be so. For when I remembered her looks
and her words to me as she talked of him I felt sure that nothing could
make her quite desert him, even though he had disappointed her. The
idea of her house which a little while ago had terrified me, came now
like an inspiration. I did not know what I should do or say when I
reached it, "But something will tell me what to do when I am there," I
thought, as we retraced our way over the floundering track of the hills.

When, for the second time that morning, I found myself in front of the
Spanish Woman's gate, I sprang out of the carriage without a moment's
hesitation. I told the man to drive back to our house on Washington
Street and tell Mr. Fenwick there that I wanted him.

There I stood in the chill daylight, shivering in my pale blue cloak,
impetuously clanging the brazen lion's head upon its clapper. The
outer door opened to me noiselessly as it had done before, shutting as
silently after. But the garden, which had seemed picturesque and
dreamy under the kind sunlight, now looked ghastly, disheveled,
crumbling, as if it had been desert