nda.

The rowdy words of her little songs and the demure plaintiveness of Mrs.
Kent's voice made an effective contrast. It amused Judith as much as any
one, and she liked to laugh, but she liked better to cry, and if you
could not hear the words, Mrs. Kent's voice made you cry; big, luxurious
tears, that stood in your eyes and did not fall. As she found her way
across the lawn, among the elaborate flower-beds, the voice followed
her, mellow and sweet. It had never sounded so sweet before. Everything
sweet in the world was sweeter to-night.

At the edge of the lawn Judith paused. Ahead of her three marble steps,
flanked by urns filled with ivy, glaring things in the daytime but
glimmering shadowy white and alluring now, led up the terrace to the
rose garden; a fairy place, far from the world, so hedged in and
shadowed by trees that it was dark even by moonlight, entered through an
old-fashioned trellised arbour, that was so mysterious and dark, she
liked it almost as well now when the rambler roses were not in flower.

When she left the room her mother had been sitting in Colonel Everard's
chair, she seemed to remember, and the Colonel and Mrs. Burr were
nowhere to be seen. The whole room looked emptier, though she did not
know who else was missing. But there were two people now in the rose
arbour. She could just hear their voices, low, with long silences
between.

She wanted the place to herself. She stood still, hoping that they would
go. There was a path into the woods on the other side of the little
garden: the Colonel's bare, semicultivated woods, combed clean of
underbrush, but you did not miss it at night. The woods were full of
adventure, but the garden was better to dream in, and Judith had a great
deal to dream about.

The lighted house looked quite small and far away across the wide,
moonlit lawn. They had stopped singing, and the laughter that followed
the song did not sound so clear as the music; you could just hear it.
Presently you could hear nothing, and it was quiet in the rose arbour,
too. She waited until she was sure, standing quite still at the edge of
the dark enclosure, not a ruffle of her white dress fluttering, very
slender and small against the dark of the leaves. Then she slipped into
the arbour.

Through a fringe of drooping vine that half hid the picture, she could
see the garden, empty and dimly moonlit, with the marble benches faintly
white. She hurried through, pushed a trailing vin