dew begins to fall," looking up, I found
that the sunset was burning in the west,
and that the stars were beginning to show.

Somehow, the way that hand touched my
shoulder, and the slight accentuation on that
word "my," made me shudder. She was
like Fate claiming a victim. It was only
the chill of the evening that sent such a
thought through me. Indoors, by-and-by,
when the curtains were drawn and the
logs blazed on the open hearth, and she
made my tea and brought it to me, and
tended me with all watchful observance,
I entered again into my fool's paradise.

And so, again, next day, as, through the
hot drowsy afternoon hours, she sat, and I
lay beside her, on the warm hay, under the
shadow of the still fragrant boughs of one
of those late-blossoming limes. My head
was in her lap, and my cheek was pressed
against the blue-veined inner side of that
warm white arm.

Beyond this meadow, stretched wave
after wave of yellow corn, all in a shimmer
and glimmer of heat, running down
the hill, overflowing the plain, seeming, from
where we were, to wash up to the very feet
of the castle-dominated romantic old city.

With eyes growing more dreamy and
more drowsy every moment, I watched the
glisten and sheen till I fell asleep. I fancy
I slept some time. I awoke suddenly and
with a sense of alarm. I had had a strange
and dreadful dream; words of deadly hate
had been hissed into my ear by a serpent,
and its cold coil had been wound round my
throat.

My hand went quickly to my throat
when I awoke, and there lay across it—
nothing dreadful—only a heavy tress of
Mrs. Rosscar's hair, which, slipping loose,
had uncoiled itself as she bent over me.

I looked up into her eyes with the horror
of my dream still on me. Did I expect to
find love shed down on me from them?
They held mine a moment; they were full
of darkness, but, as I looked up something
softened the darkness. She smiled; in her
smile there was some pity.

"I was half afraid to let you sleep," she
said, " but on such an afternoon, I thought
there could be no danger."

"Danger! What danger?"

"Of your taking cold. What other
danger could there be? You look as if
you had been dreaming painfully, my poor
boy."

She had never so addressed me before.

"I have been dreaming horribly," I said.
"Lying on your lap, on such a day, in such
a place, how could that be possible!"

She would not meet my eyes.

"I am not at all sure I have not taken
cold," I said, with a shudder, half real and
half assumed.

"You must come in at once, and take
some hot drink. Come."

We both rose and walked to the house. I
leaned on her arm: not that I now needed
its support, but I liked to feel the soft,
warm arm under my hand, and I liked to
remind her of my dependence upon her.

I often wondered, and with uneasy
wonder, that she never spoke of her child:
never, so far as I knew, wept for it. But
she was a strangely silent woman. As I
have said, she very rarely spoke first, or,
as it were, voluntarily; and when she
responded to what was said to her, it was
always as briefly as possible. It seemed
as if she understood how expressive was
every movement of her gracious form;
how needless for her, compared with other
beings, was speech, even of the eyes, far
more of the lips. Anything approaching to
liveliness of movement, or of voice, would
have been out of harmony with her being.
She was more fit to be set on a costly
pedestal and gazed at, than to move in the
common ways of this common world, I
thought. And each unconscious pose of hers
was so completely beautiful that I always
thought until I noted the next—"that is
how I would have you stand, that I might
gaze on you for ever!"

Though I believed she loved me, I was
not satisfied. I remembered her as she had
been upon the river that day, and I felt
that she was changed. I remembered the
smiles she had shed upon her child. If
only she would smile so, once, at me—but
she never did. Once, I had implored her
for a full eye to eye look, and for a smile.
Then, she had turned her face to mine; had
fixed her eyes on mine; but the dark quiet
eyes were inscrutable. Suddenly, just as
I believed I was going to read them, she
covered them with her hands, and turned
her head away.

One evening, as we sat together in the
warm twilight by the hearth, I tried to
break down the silence between us about
the child.

"Huldah!" I said, "you have not told
me where your little child is lying. Let us
go together to the grave. Let me weep
there with you—let—" I stopped
suddenly, with a cold damp on my brow, as I
remembered the awful eyes, the arms
raised, and the lips moving to curse me, of
this very woman by whom I sat. I felt
a slight convulsion of the frame round