him entirely.

As for me, those shifting, silent sheets of splendor abstracted all that
was alien, and left me in my normal state.

"There they come!" I said, as Lu and Mr. Dudley, and some others who had
entered in my absence,--gnats dancing in the beam,--stepped down toward
us. "How charming for us all to sit out here!"

"How annoying, you mean," he replied, simply for contradiction.

"It hasn't been warm enough before," I added.

"And Louise may take cold now," he said, as if wishing to exhibit his
care for her. "Whom is she speaking with? Blarsaye? And who comes
after?"

"Parti. A delightful person,--been abroad, too. You and he can have a
crack about Louvres and Vaticans now, and leave Lu and Mr. Dudley to
me."

Rose suddenly inspected me and then Parti, as if he preferred the crack
to be with cudgels; but in a second the little blaze vanished, and he
only stripped a weigelia branch of every blossom.

I wonder what made Lu behave so that night; she scarcely spoke to Rose,
appeared entirely unconcerned while he hovered round her like an
officious sprite, was all grace to the others and sweetness to Mr.
Dudley. And Rose, oblivious of snubs, paraded his devotion, seemed
determined to show his love for Lu,--as if any one cared a straw,--and
took the pains to be positively rude to me. He was possessed of an odd
restlessness; a little defiance bristled his movements, an air of
contrariness; and whenever he became quiet, he seemed again like one
enchanted and folded up in a dream, to break whose spell he was about to
abandon efforts. He told me life had destroyed my enchantment; I wonder
what will destroy his. Lu refused to sit in the garden-chair he
offered,--just suffered the wreath of pink bells he gave her to hang in
her hand, and by-and-by fall,--and when the north grew ruddier and swept
the zenith with lances of light, and when it faded, and a dim cloud
hazed all the stars, preserved the same equanimity, kept on the _evil_
tenor of her way, and bade every one an impartial farewell at
separating. She is preciously well-bred.

We hadn't remained in the garden all that time, though,--but, strolling
through the gate and over the field, had reached a small grove that
fringes the gully worn by Wild Fall and crossed by the railway. As we
emerged from that, talking gayly, and our voices almost drowned by the
dash of the little waterfall and the echo from the opposite rock, I
sprang across the curving track, thin