ad
danced on the green on Richard's birthday. Beyond and below was the
spring-house, and there was the place where the brook dived under the
ruined wall,--where Dorothy had wound into her hair the lilies of the
valley before she sailed for London.

The remains of a wall that had once held a balustrade marked the outlines
of the formal garden. The trim hedges, for seventy years neglected, had
grown incontinent. The garden itself was full of wild green things coming
up through the brown of last season's growth. But in the grass the blue
violets nestled, and Virginia picked some of these and put them in
Stephen's coat.

"You must keep them always," she said, "because we got them here."

They spied a seat beside a hoary trunk. There on many a spring day Lionel
Carvel had sat reading his Gazette. And there they rested now. The sun
hung low over the old-world gables in the street beyond the wall, and in
the level rays was an apple tree dazzling white, like a bride. The sweet
fragrance which the day draws from the earth lingered in the air.

It was Virginia who broke the silence.

"Stephen, do you remember that fearful afternoon of the panic, when you
came over from Anne Brinsmade's to reassure me?"

"Yes, dear," he said. "But what made you think of it now?"

She did not answer him directly.

"I believed what you said, Stephen. But you were so strong, so calm, so
sure of yourself. I think that made me angry when I thought how
ridiculous I must have been."

He pressed her hand.

"You were not ridiculous, Jinny." She laughed.

"I was not as ridiculous as Mr. Cluyme with his bronze clock. But do you
know what I had under my arm--what I was saving of all the things I
owned?"

"No," he answered; "but I have often wondered." She blushed.

"This house--this place made me think of it. It was Dorothy Manners's
gown, and her necklace. I could not leave them. They were all the
remembrance I had of that night at Mr. Brinsmade's gate, when we came so
near to each other."

"Virginia," he said, "some force that we cannot understand has brought us
together, some force that we could not hinder. It is foolish for me to
say so, but on that day of the slave auction, when I first saw you, I had
a premonition about you that I have never admitted until now, even to
myself."

She started.

"Why, Stephen," she cried, "I felt the same way!"

"And then," he continued quickly, "it was strange that I should have gone
to Judge Whippl