N

Stopping only long enough to send a telegram to my partner in New York,
(for which purpose I had to walk along the tracks to the main station) I
returned by the short cut to Homewood. My purpose in doing this was
twofold. I should have a chance of seeing if the men were still at work
in the river, and I should also have the added opportunity of quietly
revisiting the bungalow, on the floor of which I had noted some
chalk-marks, which I felt called for a closer examination than I had
given them. As I came in view of the dock, I saw that the men were still
busy, but at a point farther out in the river, as if all hope had been
abandoned of their discovering anything more inshore. But the
chalk-marks in the bungalow were almost forgotten by me in the interest
I experienced in a certain adventure which befell me on my way there.

I had just reached the opening in the hedge communicating with Mrs.
Carew's grounds, when I heard steps on the walk inside and a woman's
rich voice saying:

"There, that will do. You must play on the other side of the house,
Harry. And Dinah, see that he does so, and that he does not cross the
hall again till I come back. The sight of so merry a child might kill
Mrs. Ocumpaugh if she happened to look this way."

Moved by the tone, which was one in a thousand, I involuntarily peered
through the outlet I was passing, in the hope of catching a glimpse of
its owner, and thus was favored with the sight of a face which instantly
fixed itself in my memory as one of the most enchanting I had ever
encountered. Not from its beauty, yet it may have been beautiful; nor
from its youth, for the woman before me was not youthful, but from the
extraordinary eloquence of its expression caught at a rare moment when
the heart, which gave it life, was full. She was standing half-way down
the path, throwing kisses to a little boy who was leaning toward her
from an upper window. The child was laughing with glee, and it was this
laugh she was trying to check; but her countenance, as she made the
effort, was almost as merry as his, and yet was filled with such solemn
joy--such ecstasy of motherhood I should be inclined to call it, if I
had not been conscious that this must be Mrs. Carew and the child her
little nephew--that in my admiration for this exhibition of pure
feeling, I forgot to move on as she advanced into the hedge-row, and so
we came face to face. The result was as extraordinary to me as all the
rest.