ousetop,
from across the street, came the gay music of the fiddler. Mrs. Temple
laid her hand gently on my shoulder.

"My dear," she said, smiling, "I could not live for the journey."

"You must live for it," I answered. "You have the will. You must live
for it, for his sake."

She shook her head, and smiled at me with a courage which was the crown
of her sufferings.

"You are talking nonsense, David," she said; "it is not like you. Come,"
she said, rising with something of her old manner, "I must show you what
I have been doing all these years. You must admire my garden."

I followed her, marvelling, along the shell path, and there came unbidden
to my mind the garden at Temple Bow, where she had once been wont to sit,
tormenting Mr. Mason or bending to the tale of Harry Riddle's love.
Little she cared for flowers in those days, and now they had become her
life. With such thoughts in my mind, I listened unheeding to her talk.
The place was formerly occupied by a shiftless fellow, a tailor; and the
court, now a paradise, had been a rubbish heap. That orange tree which
shaded the uneven doorway of the kitchen she had found here. Figs,
pomegranates, magnolias; the camellias dazzling in their purity; the
blood-red oleanders; the pink roses that hid the crumbling adobe and
climbed even to the sloping tiles,--all these had been set out and cared
for with her own hands. Ay, and the fragrant bed of yellow jasmine over
which she lingered,--Antoinette's favorite flower.

Antoinette's flowers that she wore in her hair! In her letters Mrs.
Temple had never mentioned Antoinette, and now she read the question
(perchance purposely put there) in my eyes. Her voice faltered sadly.
Scarce a week had she been in the house before Antoinette had found her.

"I--I sent the girl away, David. She came without Monsieur de St. Gre's
knowledge, without his consent. It is natural that he thinks me--I will
not say what. I sent Antoinette away. She clung to me, she would not
go, and I had to be--cruel. It is one of the things which make the
nights long--so long. My sins have made her life unhappy."

"And you hear of her? She is not married?" I asked.

"No, she is not married," said Mrs. Temple, stooping over the jasmines.
Then she straightened and faced me, her voice shaken with earnestness.
"David, do you think that Nick still loves her?"

Alas, I could not answer that. She bent over the jasmines again.

"There were five years that I kn