ous as their presence in the opportunity it afforded for
uninterrupted and imaginative reflection. Both Kate and Josephine were
at first shocked and wounded by the discovery of the real character of
the two men with whom they had associated so familiarly, but it was no
disparagement to their sense of propriety to say that the shock did not
last long, and was accompanied with the fascination of danger. This was
succeeded by a consciousness of the delicate flattery implied in their
indirect influence over the men who had undoubtedly risked their lives
for the sake of remaining with them. The best woman is not above being
touched by the effect of her power over the worst man, and Kate at first
allowed herself to think of Falkner in that light. But if in her later
reflections he suffered as a heroic experience to be forgotten, he
gained something as an actual man to be remembered. Now that the
proposed rides from "his friend's house" were a part of the illusion,
would he ever dare to visit them again? Would she dare to see him? She
held her breath with a sudden pain of parting that was new to her; she
tried to think of something else, to pick up the scattered threads of
her life before that eventful day. But in vain; that one week had filled
the place with implacable memories, or more terrible, as it seemed to
her and her sister, they had both lost their feeble, alien hold
upon Eagle's Court in the sudden presence of the real genii of these
solitudes, and henceforth they alone would be the strangers there.
They scarcely dared to confess it to each other, but this return to the
dazzling sunlight and cloudless skies of the past appeared to them to be
the one unreal experience; they had never known the true wild flavor
of their home, except in that week of delicious isolation. Without
breathing it aloud, they longed for some vague denoument to this
experience that should take them from Eagle's Court forever.

It was noon the next day when the little household beheld the last shred
of their illusion vanish like the melting snow in the strong sunlight
of John Hale's return. He was accompanied by Colonel Clinch and Rawlins,
two strangers to the women. Was it fancy, or the avenging spirit of
their absent companions? but HE too looked a stranger, and as the little
cavalcade wound its way up the slope he appeared to sit his horse and
wear his hat with a certain slouch and absence of his usual restraint
that strangely shocked them. Ev