e guessed--that--you--were--but I just--just hoped--. Good
night. I didn't see the Colonel--please say I send my love."

She was riding away, when he called desperately after her:

"Don't you want Dale to have a little of it?"

That one taunting, trembling, passionate question, hurled at her with
such bitterness of feeling, such hopeless sense of despair, touched a
spring which opened the doors of the heretofore inscrutable, and flooded
her with light. For an instant the pike danced before her eyes as though
it were a road of bejeweled splendor! She wanted to laugh, and she did
laugh; and, if he had guessed the reason, she might have had to use both
whip and spur in a longer race than just to Bob's gate. But he did not
guess, and she did not turn her head nor slacken pace. Unhappily and
sullenly he rode on to Arden.

Several days passed before they met; but in the meanwhile he had spent
not a few nights sitting by that window in his darkened room, building
castles and tearing them down, planning futures and destroying them;
dreaming, dreaming. His attitude had become merely deferential,
requiring a studied reticence upon her own part, and precluding a
reference to their meeting on the road, or any mention of nobility, the
sheriff, Dale or Tusk.

CHAPTER XXXIII

THE MYSTIC GARDENER SHOWS HIS WORK

It was sundown about a week later when Brent came up the steps and threw
himself in a chair by the Colonel's side. Jane and the faithful Mac had
just left--indeed, the sound of her horse's hoofbeats might still be
heard through the pulseless evening as the two men gazed in moody
silence at the approaching night. The sky had taken on that deep blue
velvet softness of Italian beauty, and the low, red west of the dying
day might have been reflected from some funeral pyre in distant, mystic
India. A murmur of drowsy birds came from the darkening trees--a few
hushed, plaintive notes, wistfully calling in tones of twilight.

"Poor little Mesmie is having a bad time of it," Brent spoke with an
effort. "It's been fourteen days, and Stone says he must try to graft
skin. I offered mine, but he couldn't consider it."

"That was very fine of you, Brent," the old gentleman turned to him.
"Why wouldn't he take it?"

"Oh, there wasn't anything fine about it, Colonel," he answered with a
touch of irritation. "He couldn't take it because he saw us with some
juleps this morning. He says he has to have healthy skin for grafting