the sun thrust aside his shroud and
burnt for an instant on a scarlet maple-bough that hung in premature
brilliance across the way. The hasty color, true and fine, was like a
spell against enchantment; it was the drop that tested the virtue of
this chemistry and proved it naught.

Mrs. Laudersdale looked askance at her companion, then turned and met
his gaze. Slowly her lashes fell, the earth seemed to fail beneath her
feet, the light to swoon from her eyes, her lips shook, and a full
flush swept branding and burning up throat and face, stinging her very
forehead, and shooting down her fingertips. In an instant it had faded,
and she shone the pallid, splendid thing she was before. In that
instant, for the first time this summer, she comprehended that her
husband's existence imported anything to her. Behind the maple-tree, the
wood began again; without a syllable, she stepped aside, suffered him to
pass, and hastened to bury herself in its recesses.

What lover ever accounted for his mistress's caprices? Mr. Raleigh
proceeded on his walk alone. And what was her husband to him? He did
not know that such a man existed. For him there had been no deadly
allurement in the fervid scene; it had stretched a land of promise
veiled in its azure ardors, with intimations of rapture and certainty of
rest. Now, as he wandered on and turned down another lane to the woods,
the tints grew deeper; his eyes, bent inward, saw all the world in the
color of his thought; he would have affirmed that the bare brown banks
were lined in deep-toned indigo flower-bells whose fragrance rose
visible above them or curled from stem to stem, and that the hollows
in which the path hid itself at last were of the same soft gloom. But,
finally, when not far distant from the Bawn again, he shook off his
reverie and struck another path that he might avoid rencontre. Perhaps
the very sound that awoke him was the one he wished to shun; at the next
step it became more distinct,--a child's voice singing some tuneless
song; and directly a tiny apparition appeared before him, as if it had
taken shape, with its wide, light eyes and corn-silk hair, from the most
wan and watery of sunbeams. But what had a child to do in this paradise,
thought he, and from whence did it come? Impossible to imagine. Her
garments, of rich material, hung freshly torn, it may be, but in shreds;
her skin, if that of some fair and delicate nursling, was stained with
berries and smeared with