eature trampling and snorting below. She remembered
strange tales out of the "Arabian Nights," "Bellerophon and the
Chimaera," "St. George and the Dragon"; she waited, half-expectant, to
see the great talon-stretched wings flap up against the slow edge of
dawn, where Orion lay, a pallid monster, watching the planet that
flashed like some great gem low in a crystalline west, and she stepped
nearer, with a kind of eager and martial spirit, to do battle in turn.

"Stand aside, Una!" cried Mr. Raleigh, who had worked in a determined
characteristic silence, and the horse's head, sharp ear, and starting
eye were brought to sight, and then his heaving bulk.

"All right, massa!" cried Capua, after a moment's survey, as he patted
the trembling flanks. "Pretty tough ex'cise dat! Spect Massam Clean be
mighty high,--his best cretur done about killed wid dat tree;--feared he
show dis nigger a stick worf two o' dat!"

"We had like to have finished our dance on nothing," said Mr. Raleigh
now, looking back on the splintered wheels and panels. "Will you mount?
I can secure you from falling."

"Oh, no,--I can walk; it is only a little way."

"Reach home like Cinderella? If you had but one glass slipper, that
might be; but in satin ones it is impossible." And she found herself
seated aloft before quite aware what had happened.

Pacing along, they talked lightly, with the gayety natural upon
excitement,--Capua once in a while adding a cogent word. As they opened
the door, Mr. Raleigh paused a moment.

"I am glad," he said, "that my last day with you has been crowned by
such adventures. I leave the Lake at noon."

She hung, listening, with a backward swerve of figure, and regarding
him in the dim light of the swinging hall-lamp, for the moment
half-petrified. Suddenly she turned and seized his hand in hers,--then
threw it off.

"_Cher ami_," she murmured hastily, in a piercing whisper, like some
articulate sigh, "_si tu m'aimes, dis moi!_"

The door closed in the draught, the drawing-room door opened, and Mr.
Laudersdale stepped out, having been awaiting their return. Mr. Raleigh
caught the flash of Marguerite's eye and the crimson of her cheek, as
she sprang forward up the stairs and out of sight.

The family did not breakfast together the next day, as politeness
chooses to call the first hour after a ball, and Mr. Raleigh was making
some arrangements preliminary to his departure, in his own apartments,
at about the hour of no