home-made still; when, crouched beneath the stars, her quick ears had
caught some faint, suspicious sounds. Ruinous though they might turn out
to be, she used to love those tingle-giving sounds. The same sort of
thrill now reached past the culture-clothed sentinels around her heart
and gave it an honest shake for old time's sake. Slowly she began to
smile, and, seeing this, he moodily asked:

"Why are you smiling?"

"I don't know, Brent. I just want to smile, that's all." Then she arose,
murmured good night, and went out.

But the branches were still swaying where she had passed when he heard a
quick cry of surprise.

"Brent!"

He was beside her in a second, looking over her outstretched arm that
pointed toward the thickest portion of the grounds.

"What is it?" he asked.

"I don't know," she whispered. "Someone must have been here, and ran in
there!"

He dashed after whatever it was, plunging through the shrubbery and
threshing about for several minutes. Once she thought she heard a low
cry, or voice, and for awhile he was so quiet that she grew more uneasy;
but again the crackling sounds proclaimed him to be on the search, and
finally he emerged.

"It's nothing," he said, coming up. "Maybe a dog."

"It couldn't have been a dog. Let's go to the house--it makes me
creepy!"

They turned, crossing the little patches of moonlight filtered through
the trees upon the violet sprinkled ground. It was a wonderfully
seductive spot on a night like this! The mellow tinkle of the piano,
arising from Ann's nimble touch, floated out to them;--they might have
been walking in an enchanted fairy-land but for the turmoil about his
heart and the unrest in her own. Impulsively she faced him:

"What do you think that could have been?"

He was taken unawares, and had of course no suspicion of her cause for
nervousness.

"Brent," she said again, "I must know who was there!"

He stood humbly before her with his head bowed. When he spoke his voice
was absolutely sincere.

"I can't tell you, Jane."

This magnified her fears, for she thought he was trying mercifully to
spare her.

"You must tell me," she urged, betraying her terror by grasping his arm.
In his own preoccupation he did not notice this. "You must tell me," she
was pleading. "Oh, Brent, if we are ever to be friends, here, tell me!
There's a vital reason why I must know at once!"

"But, Jane, I can't," he earnestly replied to her. "It was someone to
see me!"