The voice sounded, in that balmy October night, sweet and mellow as the
dropping of its over-ripe leaves. The female did indeed tremble
violently.

"Look, look! I am followed," she whispered.

The man stepped a pace forward, peered through the oak branches, and
stole cautiously to her side again.

"It is Mellen!"

She darted away, dragging her shawl from the grasp that man had fastened
upon it,--away under the old oak, and along the outskirts of the grove.
She paused a moment in breathless terror at the narrowest point of the
lawn, then darted across it, huddling the skirt of her ball dress up
with one hand, and sweeping the dead leaves in winrows after her with
the fringes of her shawl. She avoided the conservatory, for Tom was
still visible through its rolling waves of glass--and, turning to the
servants' entrance, ran up a flight of dark stairs into the shaded
lights of a chamber. She flung the heavy shawl breathlessly on a couch,
shook the snowy masses of her dress into decorous folds, and stole to
the window on tip-toe, where she stood, white and panting for breath,
watching the lawn and grove, with wild, eager eyes, as if she feared her
footsteps in the leaves might have been detected even in the darkness.

CHAPTER XIII.

WHO COULD IT HAVE BEEN?

The evening passed drearily enough to Grantley Mellen. He was in no
spirits for society and the gay bustle; the lights, the music, the
constraint he was forced to put upon himself, and the cheerfulness he
was obliged to assume, only wearied him.

A strange and unaccountable dread of his approaching journey possessed
him. It had grown stronger as the days passed on, and that night was
more powerful than ever.

Sometimes he was almost ready to think it a presentiment; perhaps he was
never to return from that voyage; some unseen danger awaited him in that
distant land, and he should die there, far from the sound of every
voice, the touch of every hand that was dear to him.

He was vexed with himself for indulging in this superstitious weakness;
but, in spite of all his efforts, the thought would recur again and
again, oppressing him with a dreary sense of desolation that made the
brilliant scene around absolutely repulsive.

He left the lighted rooms at last, and passed through the hall on to the
piazza which overlooked the sea.

It was a beautiful evening; the moonlight, escaping from under a bank of
clouds, lay silvery and broad upon the lawn, and