t's your wish, I must obey, and relieve you of my presence,
apparently so disagreeable."

Saying this he steps to one side. Then continues,--

"As I've told you, I was on the way to your father's house to take leave
of the family. If you're not going immediately home, perhaps I may be
the bearer of a message for you?"

The irony is evident; but Helen Armstrong is not sensible of it. She
does not even think of it. Her only thought is how to get
disembarrassed of this man who has appeared at a moment so _mal
apropos_. Charles Clancy--for he was the expected one--may have been
detained by some cause unknown, a delay still possible of justification.
She has a lingering thought he may yet come; and, so thinking, her eye
turns towards the forest with a quick, subtle glance.

Notwithstanding its subtlety, and the obscurity surrounding them, Darke
observes, comprehends it.

Without waiting for her rejoinder, he proceeds to say,--

"From the mistake you've just made, Miss Armstrong, I presume you took
me for some one bearing the baptismal name of Charles. In these parts I
know only one person who carries that cognomen--one Charles Clancy. If
it be he you are expecting, I think I can save you the necessity of
stopping out in the night air any longer. If you're staying for him
you'll be disappointed; he will certainly not come."

"What mean you, Mr Darke? Why do you say that?"

His words carry weighty significance, and throw the proud girl off her
guard. She speaks confusedly, and without reflection.

His rejoinder, cunningly conceived, designed with the subtlety of the
devil, still further affects her, and painfully.

He answers, with assumed nonchalance,--

"Because I know it."

"How?" comes the quick, unguarded interrogatory.

"Well; I chanced to meet Charley Clancy this morning, and he told me he
was going off on a journey. He was just starting when I saw him. Some
affair of the heart, I believe; a little love-scrape he's got into with
a pretty Creole girl, who lives t'other side of Natchez. By the way, he
showed me a photograph of yourself, which he said you had sent him. A
very excellent likeness, indeed. Excuse me for telling you, that he and
I came near quarrelling about it. He had another photograph--that of
his Creole _chere amie_--and would insist that she is more beautiful
than you. I may own, Miss Armstrong, you've given me no great reason
for standing forth as your champion. Still, I