t the dark carpet. She saw in an instant, however, that it was
nothing more dangerous than a fragment of love-vine from the garden,
which had clung to her skirt. She picked up the tiny mass of tendrils
and with a slow smile tossed it over her right shoulder through the
window. "If it takes root," she said aloud, "my sweetheart loves me."
She leaned from the sill to peer down into the misty garden, but could
not follow its fall.

Long ago her visitor would have reached Damory Court. She had a vision
of him wandering, candle in hand, through the empty echoing rooms,
looking at the voiceless portraits on the walls, thinking perhaps of his
father, of the fatal duel of which he had never known. She liked the
way he had spoken of his father!

Or, maybe he was sitting in the lonely library, with some volume from
its shelves on his knees. She pictured Uncle Jefferson fetching his pipe
and jar of tobacco and striking the match on his broad foot to light it.
She remembered one of the old darky's sayings: "Er man ain' nachally no
angel, but 'thouten terbacker, Ah reck'n he be pizen-ugly ernuf ter giv
de Bad Man de toof-ache!" In that instant when her cheek had touched his
rough tweed jacket, she had been sensible of that woodsy pipy fragrance.

A vivid flush swept up her face and with a sudden gesture she caught her
open palms to her cheek. With what a daring softness his eyes had hazed
as they looked down at her under his crisp waving hair. Why was the
memory of that look so sharply sweet?

As she leaned, out of the stillness there came to her ear a mellow
sound. It was the bell of the court-house in the village. She counted
the strokes falling clearly or faintly as the sluggish breeze ebbed or
swelled. It was eleven.

She drew back, dropped the curtain to shut out the wan glimmer, and in
the darkness crept into the soft bed as if into a hiding-place.

CHAPTER XXIX

AT THE DOME

A warm sun and an air mildly mellow. A faint gold-shadowed mist over the
valley and a soft lilac haze blending the rounded outlines of the hills.
A breeze shook the twigs on the cedars, fluttered the leaves of the
poplars till they looked a quivering mass of palpitating silver, bearing
away with it the cool elastic grace-notes of the dripping water, as it
sparkled over the big green-streaked rocks at the foot of the little
lake at Damory Court. Over the wild grape-vines a pair of drunken
butterflies reeled, kissing wings, and on the stone