had tolerated the company of Briones a single moment after the
scene at the Bad Hof, and yet he had no confidence in the colonel's
attitude towards the Mexican. Hopeless of the future as her letter
seemed, still its naive and tacit confession of her feelings at the
moment was all that sustained him.

Two days passed, and he still lingered aimlessly in New York. In two
days more the Panama steamer would sail--yet in his hesitation he had
put off securing his passage. He visited the offices of the different
European steamer lines, and examined the recent passenger lists, but
there was no record of any of the party. What made his quest seem the
more hopeless was his belief that, after Briones' revelation, she had
cast off the name of Arguello and taken some other. She might even be
in New York under that new name now.

On the morning of the third day, among his letters was one that bore
the postmark of a noted suburban settlement of wealthy villa-owners on
the Hudson River. It was from Milly Woods, stating that her father had
read of his arrival in the papers, and begged he would dine and stay
the next night with them at "Under Cliff," if he "still had any
interest in the fortunes of old friends. Of course," added the
perennially incoherent Milly, "if it bores you we sha'n't expect you."
The quick color came to Paul's careworn cheek. He telegraphed assent,
and at sunset that afternoon stepped off the train at a little private
woodland station--so abnormally rustic and picturesque in its
brown-bark walls covered with scarlet Virginia creepers that it looked
like a theatrical erection.

Mr. Woods's station wagon was in waiting, but Paul, handing the driver
his valise, and ascertaining the general direction of the house, and
that it was not far distant, told him to go on and he would follow
afoot. The tremor of vague anticipation had already come upon him;
something that he knew not whether he feared or longed for, only that
it was inevitable, had begun to possess him. He would soon recover
himself in the flaring glory of this woodland, and the invigoration of
this hale October air.

It was a beautiful and brilliant sunset, yet not so beautiful and
brilliant but that the whole opulent forest around him seemed to
challenge and repeat its richest as well as its most delicate dyes. The
reddening west, seen through an opening of scarlet maples, was no
longer red; the golden glory of the sun, sinking over a promontor