the shrubbery from the storm, with the house so near,
seemed unexplainable, and I awaited with anxiety the time when I could
learn the reason from her own lips. The presence of the figure--the
figure of a man--on the opposite side of the hedge, was also
inexplicable. I should have guessed it to be Mannering, but I would have
staked my life upon Evie's truthfulness when she had told me how much
she had learned to detest him. Besides, her delight was obvious when I
arrived on the scene.

Not until the evening, however, did I get a chance of speaking to Evie
again. The Colonel and I dined alone, Evie sending word to say that the
storm had left her with a headache, and that she would join us later. I
was so silent during the meal that my host grew quite merry at my
expense.

"Wait till you are married, my boy," he remarked. "There will come times
when you will be grateful for these feminine headaches."

I hate cheap witticisms of this sort, but I could hardly resent them
from the Colonel as I could have done had they fallen from any one
else's lips; but I fancy he saw at last that they were distasteful to
me, for after a while he forebore to comment upon my dour looks.

About ten Evie came downstairs. By this time the storm had passed away
entirely, and the air was deliciously fresh and cool after the rain. It
was a strangely subdued girl who came nervously to me, and shrank away
from me as I kissed her.

"No, Jim, no! You mustn't do that," she said.

Colonel Maitland had slipped away upon his daughter's entrance, and we
were alone.

"Why, darling, what ails you?" I asked.

"Nothing--nothing. Oh! don't ask me," she almost wailed in reply.

I put my arm about her waist, and drew her down beside me to a seat on
a big Chesterfield drawn before one of the windows. She resisted faintly
at first, but presently I heard her give a sigh of content, and felt her
nestle towards me. Then I spoke.

"Tell me, dear, what possessed you to go out into the storm?"

"I don't know," she murmured--"I don't know. I--I felt that I must. I
didn't think it was going to break so soon, and then the first flash of
lightning and the voice of the thunder! It was like judgment day."

"It is all passed and over," I remarked, with a man's clumsy attempt at
consolation.

"I wish it were--I wish it were," she repeated, with an indrawn sigh.

"It is all over hours ago," I said.

She broke away from me passionately. "Oh! Jim, you don't know,"