other always--to grow into a closer intimacy.

In the minds of these two men there was absolute accord on one point.
Either would have said that Elizabeth Herbert's beauty was a supreme
endowment, and more nearly perfect than the beauty of any other woman.
She was slender, not tall, but poised and graceful with a distinction of
bearing that added to her inches. Her hair was burnished copper and her
coloring the tint of warm ivory with the sunlight showing through. North
gazed at her as though he would store in his memory the vision of her
loveliness. Then they walked out to the dining-room.

The dinner was rather a somber feast. North felt the restraint of the
general's presence; he sensed his disfavor; and with added bitterness he
realized that this was his last night in Mount Hope, that the morrow
would find him speeding on his way West. He had given up everything for
nothing, and now that a purpose, a hope, a great love had come to him,
he must go from this place, the town of his birth, where he had become a
bankrupt in both purse and reputation.

It was a relief when they returned to the drawing-room. There the
general excused himself, and North and Elizabeth were left alone. She
seated herself before the open fire of blazing hickory logs, whose
light, and that of the shaded lamps, filled the long room with a soft
radiance. She had never seemed so desirable to North as now when he was
about to leave her. He stood silent, leaning against the corner of the
chimneypiece, looking down on all her springlike radiance. Usually he
was neither preoccupied nor silent, but to-night he was both. The
thought that he was seeing her for the last time--Ah, this was the price
of all his folly! At length he spoke.

"I came to-night to say good-by, Elizabeth!"

She glanced up, startled.

"To say good-by?" she repeated.

He nodded gloomily.

"Do you mean that you are going to leave Mount Hope?" she asked slowly.

"Yes, to-night maybe."

Her glance no longer met his, but he was conscious that she had lost
something of her serenity.

"Are you sorry, Elizabeth?" he ventured.

To pass mutely out of her life had suddenly seemed an impossibility, and
his tenderness and yearning trembled in his voice. She answered
obliquely, by asking:

"Must you go?"

"I want to get away from Mount Hope. I want to leave it all,--all but
you, dear!" he said. "You haven't answered me, Elizabeth; will you
care?"

"I am sorry," she said slow