mpatient desire to embrace
his niece did not allow the Colonel an occasion for argument and parley.
Chafed at this fresh experience of the capricious uncertainty of woman,
he had walked on with Vance to the Manor-house. Left alone, Caroline
could not endure the stillness and inaction which increased the tumult
of her thoughts; she would at least have one more look--it might be the
last--at the scenes in which her childhood had sported--her youth known
its first happy dreams. But a few yards across those circumscribed
demesnes, on through those shadowy serried groves, and she should steal
unperceived in view of the house, the beloved lake, perhaps even once
more catch a passing glimpse of the owner. She resolved, she glided
on; she gained the beech-grove, when, by the abrupt wind of the banks,
Darrell and Alban came suddenly on the very spot. The flutter of
her robe, as she turned to retreat, caught Alban's eye; the reader
comprehends with what wily intent, conceived on the moment, that
unscrupulous schemer shaped the words which chained her footstep, and
then stung her on to self-disclosure. Trembling and blushing, she now
stood before the startled man--He startled out of every other sentiment
and feeling than that of ineffable, exquisite delight to be once more in
her presence; she, after her first passionate outburst, hastening on, in
confused broken words, to explain that she was there but by accident--by
chance; confusion growing deeper and deeper--how explain the motive that
had charmed her steps to the spot?

Suddenly from the opposite bank came the music of the magic flute, and
her voice as suddenly stopped and failed her.

"Again--again," said Darrell, dreamily. "The same music! the same air!
and this the same place on which we two stood together when I first
dared to say, 'I love!' Look! we are under the very tree! Look! there
is the date I carved on the bark when you were gone, but had left Hope
behind. Ah, Caroline, why can I not now resign myself to age? Why is
youth, while I speak, rushing back into my heart, into my soul? Why
cannot I say, 'Gratefully I accept your tender friendship; let the past
be forgotten; through what rests to me of the future while on earth, be
to me as a child. I cannot--I cannot! Go!"

She drew nearer to him, gently, timidly. "Even that, Darrell,--even
that; something in your life--let me be something still!"

"Ah," he said with melancholy bitterness, "you deceive me no longer n