ghton's arm; her face was lifted steadily to his, like a flower to the
light; her violet eyes were dewy and sparkling with happiness. There were
little clutches of her fingers on his wrist whenever he turned to look at
her. There were spasms of joy in her slender and somewhat wasted frame as
she leaned from time to time against his shoulder.

Arrived at the house, she was loth to have him leave her for even the time
required to take his horse to the stable.

"Come soon," she said--"come as quick as you can. I shall be at the
window. Look up when you reach the gate. Look at the window all the way
from the gate to the door."

In an instant, not even taking off her bonnet, she was sitting by the
window waiting for him to appear.

A man approached, walking behind the hedge of lilacs which bordered the
yard, and halted at the gate with an air of hesitation. She turned ghastly
white: retribution was upon her. It was Duvernois.

With that swift instinct of escape which sensitive and timorous creatures
possess, she glided out of the room, through the upper hall, down a back
stairway, into the garden behind the house, and so on to an orchard
already obscure in the twilight. Here she paused in her breathless flight,
and burst into one of her frequent coughs, which she vainly attempted to
smother.

"I was already dying," she groaned. "Ah, why could he not have given me
time to finish?"

From the orchard she could faintly see the road, and she now discovered
Leighton returning briskly toward the house. Her first thought was, "He
will look up at the window, and he will not see me!" Her next was, "They
will meet, and all will be known!"

Under the sting of this last reflection she again ran onward until her
breath failed. She had no idea where she should go: her only purpose was
to fly from immediate exposure and scorn--to fly both from the man she
detested and the man she loved. Her speed was quickened to the extent of
her strength by the consideration that she was already missed, and would
soon be pursued.

"Oh, don't let them come!--don't let them find me!" she prayed to some
invisible power, she could not have said what.

Mainly intent as she was upon mere present escape from reproachful eyes,
she at times thought of lurking in the woods or in some neighboring
village until Duvernois should disappear and leave her free to return to
Leighton. But always the reflection came up, "Now he knows that I have
deceived him; no