ourse extended. She
sprang across gaps at which she would another time have shuddered; she
clambered over fallen trees, penetrated thickets of tangled brier, and
followed up the shrunken beds of streams, till suddenly the wood grew
thin again, and she emerged upon an open space,--a long lawn, where the
grass grew rank and tall as in deserted graveyards, and on which the
afternoon sunshine lay with most dreary, desolate emphasis. Marguerite
had scarcely comprehended herself before; now, as she looked out on the
utter loneliness of the place, all joyousness, all content, seemed wiped
from the world. She leaned against a tree where the building rose before
her, old and forsaken, washed by rains, beaten by winds. A blind slung
open, loose on a broken hinge; the emptiness of the house looked through
it like a spirit. The woodbine seemed the only living thing about
it,--the woodbine that had swung its clusters, heavy as grapes of
Eshcol, along one wall, and, falling from support, had rioted upon the
ground in masses of close-netted luxuriance.

Standing and surveying the silent scene of former gayety, a figure
came down the slope, crushing the grass with lingering tread, checked
himself, and, half-reversed, surveyed it with her. Her first impulse was
to approach, her next to retreat; by a resolution of forces she remained
where she was. Mr. Raleigh's position prevented her from seeing the
expression of his face; from his attitude seldom was anything to be
divined. He turned with a motion of the arm, as if he swung off a
burden, and met her eye. He laughed, and drew near.

"I am tempted to return to that suspicion of mine when I first met you,
Miss Marguerite," said he. "You take shape from solitude and empty air
as easily as a Dryad steps from her tree."

"There are no Dryads now," said Marguerite, sententiously.

"Then you confess to being a myth?"

"I confess to being tired, Mr. Raleigh."

Mr. Raleigh's manner changed, at her petulance and fatigue, to the old
air of protection, and he gave her his hand. It was pleasant to be the
object of his care, to be with him as at first, to renew their former
relation. She acquiesced, and walked beside him.

"You have had some weary travel," he said, "and probably not more than
half of it in the path."

And she feared he would glance at the rents in her frock, forgetting
that they were not sufficiently infrequent facts to be noticeable.

"He treats me like a child," she thoug