at day to Miranda--for this star-gazer to overhear--that she did
not believe Kincaid loved Flora, and the hearer had longed to ask her
why, but knew she could not tell. Why is a man's word. "They're as
helpless without it," the muser recalled having very lately written on a
secret page, "as women are before it. And yet a girl can be very hungry,
at times, for a why. They say he's as brave as a lion--why is he never
brave to me?"

So futilely ended the strain on the remembered page, but while his
unsuspected gaze abode on her lifted eyes her thought prolonged the
note: "If he meant love to-night, why did he not stand to his meaning
when I laughed it away? Was that for his friend's sake, or is he only
not brave enough to make one wild guess at me? Ah, I bless Heaven he's
the kind that cannot! And still--oh, Hilary Kincaid, if you were the
girl and I the man! I shouldn't be on my way home; I'd be down in this
garden--." She slowly withdrew.

Hilary, stepping back to keep her in sight, was suddenly aware of the
family coachman close at his side. Together they moved warily a few
steps farther.

"You mus' escuse me, Cap'n," the negro amiably whispered. "You all
right, o' co'se! Yit dese days, wid no white gen'leman apputtainin' onto
de place--"

"Old man!" panted Hilary, "you've saved my life!"

"Oh, my Lawd, no! Cap'n, I--"

"Yes, you have! I was just going into fits! Now step in and fetch me out
here--" He shaped his arms fantastically and twiddled his fingers.

Bending with noiseless laughter the negro nodded and went.

Just within her window, Anna, still in reverie, sat down at a slender
desk, unlocked a drawer, then a second one inside it, and drew forth--no
mere secret page but--a whole diary! "To Anna, from Miranda, Christmas,
1860." Slowly she took up a pen, as gradually laid it by again, and
opposite various dates let her eyes rest on--not this, though it was
still true:

"The more we see of Flora, the more we like her."

Nor this: "Heard a great, but awful, sermon on the duty of resisting
Northern oppression."

But this: "Connie thinks he 'inclines' to me. Ho! all he's ever said has
been for his far-away friend. I wish he would incline, or else go ten
times as far away! Only not to the war--God forbid! Ah, me, how I long
for his inclining! And while I long he laughs, and the more he laughs
the more I long, for I never, never so doted on any one's laugh. Oh,
shame! to love before--"

What sound was th