ay to Lauderdale, not to see Fauquier, but to see you. I
wished to ask you a question--I wished to make certain. And then you
passed me going to Silver Hill, and I said, 'It is certainly so.' I have
believed it to be so. I believe it now. And yet I ask you
to-night--Judith--"

"You ask me what?" said Judith. "Here is Mr. Stafford."

Maury Stafford came into the silver space before the house, glanced
upward, and mounted the steps. "I walked as far as the gate with
Breckinridge. He tells me, Mr. Cleave, that he is of your Company of
Volunteers."

"Yes."

"I shall turn my face toward the sea to-morrow. Heigho! War is folly at
the best. And you?--"

"I leave Greenwood in the morning."

The other, leaning against a pillar, drew toward him a branch of
climbing rose. The light from the hall struck against him. He always
achieved the looking as though he had stepped from out a master-canvas.
To-night this was strongly so. "In the morning! You waste no time.
Unfortunately I cannot get away for another twenty-four hours." He let
the rose bough go and turned to Judith. His voice when he spoke to her
became at once low and musical. There was light enough to see the flush
in his cheek, the ardour in his eye. "'Unfortunately!' What a word to
use in leaving Greenwood! No! For me most fortunately I must wait
another four and twenty hours."

"Greenwood," said Judith, "will be lonely without old friends." As she
spoke, she moved toward the house door. In passing a great porch chair
her dress caught on the twisted wood. Both men started forward, but
Stafford was much the nearer to her. Released, she thanked him with
grave kindness, went on to the doorway, and there turned, standing a
moment in her drapery of dim blue, in the two lights. She had about her
a long scarf of black lace, and now she drew it closer, holding it
beneath her chin with a hand slender, fine, and strong. "Good-night,"
she said. "It is not long to morning, now. Good-night, Mr. Stafford.
Good-night, Richard."

The "good-night" that Stafford breathed after her needed no commentary.
It was that of the lover confessed. Cleave, from his side of the porch,
looked across and thought, "I will be a fool no longer. She was merely
kind to me--a kindness she could afford. 'Do not go till morning--_dear
cousin_!'" There was a silence on the Greenwood porch, a white-pillared
rose-embowered space, paced ere this by lovers and rivals. It was broken
by Mr. Corbin Wood, retur