there was mockery too, and she laughed
as I talked of my grief and rage, as though she thought I was playing
a part. It was merry laughter, and there was no ring of falsehood in
it, but why should she laugh at all?"

This was a question I could not answer; who could? Juliet is beyond
the comprehension of us all.

"But what is the use of plaguing myself with riddles?" he now asked,
starting up as suddenly as he had sat down. "We are to be married in a
month, and the Colonel--I have seen the Colonel--has promised to dance
at our wedding. Will it be in the new stone house? It would be a
fitting end to this comedy if he were to dance in _that_?"

I thought as Orrin did about this, but with more seriousness perhaps;
and it was not till after he had left me that I remembered I had not
asked whom he suspected of firing his house, now that he was assured
of the innocence of her who was most likely to profit by its burning.

* * * * *

"Now I understand Juliet!" was the cry with which Orrin burst into my
presence late this afternoon. "Men are saying and women whispering
that I destroyed my own house, in order to save myself the shame of
accepting the Colonel's offer while I had a roof of my own." And,
burning with rage, he stamped his foot upon the ground, and shook his
hand so threateningly in the direction of his fancied enemies that I
felt some reflection of his anger in my own breast, and said or tried
to say that they could not know him as I did or they would never
accuse him of so mean a deed, whatever else they might bring against
him.

"It makes me wild, it makes me mad, it makes me feel like leaving the
town forever!" was his hoarse complaint as I finished my feeble
attempt at consolation. "If Juliet were half the woman she ought to be
she would come and live with me in a log-cabin in the woods before
she would accept the Colonel's house now. And to think that she, _she_
should be affected by the opinions of the rest, and think me so
destitute of pride that I would stoop to sacrifice my own home for the
sake of stepping into that of a rival's. O woman, woman, what are you
made of? Not of the same stuff as we men, surely."

I strove to calm him, for he was striding fiercely and impatiently
about the room. But at my first word he burst forth with:

"And her father, who should control her, aids and encourages her
follies. He is a slave to the Colonel, who is the slave of his own
wil