d out, "Bessie! Why, Bessie, is that you? What
on earth--"

The lady made no response, but looked over her shoulder, and sprang
forward like a deer, causing a tumult among the plants as she rushed
through them.

Tom stood motionless, lost in amazement; for over a ball dress which
seemed white--he could discover nothing more,--the lady was shrouded
head and person, in a blanket shawl, which he knew to be Elizabeth's,
from the broad crimson stripes that ran across it.

After his first amazement Tom sat down again, heaving a deep sigh, and
retreated further behind the flowering branches, that no one might look
upon his unmanly sorrow.

"Poor Bessie, poor thing," he muttered, "I suppose she feels just as I
do, like a fish out of water, in all these fine doings. I'd follow her,
and we'd take a melancholy walk together in the moonlight, if it was not
that Elsie might happen to get tired of dancing with those fellows, and
come in here to rest a minute, when I could hide away and look at her
through the plants."

Tom had in reality startled the lady shrouded in that great travelling
shawl, for once out of doors she stood full half a minute listening with
bated breath, and one foot advanced, ready to spring away if any sound
reached her. Then she walked on with less desperate haste, bending her
course through the shrubberies towards a grove of trees that lay between
the open grounds and the shore.

It was a balmy October evening, moonlight, but shadowed by hosts of
white scudding clouds. The wind blew up freshly from the water,
scattered storms of gorgeous leaves around her as she approached the
grove which was still heavy with foliage, perfectly splendid in the
sunlight, but now all shadows and blackness. On the edge of the grove,
just under a vast old oak, whose great limbs scarcely swayed in the
wind, the lady paused and uttered some name in a low, cautious voice.

A spark of fire flashed down to the earth, as if some one had flung away
his cigar in haste, and instantly footsteps rustled in the dead leaves.
The branches of the oak bent low, and behind it was a thicket of young
trees. The lady did not feel safe, even in the darkness, but moved on to
meet the person who advanced in the deeper shadows, where even the edges
of her white dress, which fell below the shawl, were lost to the eye.

As she stood panting in the shelter, a man's voice addressed her, and
his hand was laid upon her shoulder.

"How you tremble!"