ed that afternoon, as I sat there in the woods; one word will be
enough--tell me what I must think of it--and of you." He was trying her
to the utmost now.

A painful red flush had darkened her face, but, except for that, she did
not flinch. "You must think what you please," she answered.

Then she escaped; she had opened the door, and now she went rapidly down
the hall towards her own room.

He stood gazing. If he had not known she was innocent, he should have
set down her tone to defiance; it was exactly the sort of low-voiced
defiance which he had expected from her when he had supposed--what he
_had_ supposed.

But his suppositions had been entirely false. Did she still wish him to
believe that they were true!

It appeared so.

CHAPTER XXIV.

Garda Thorne went to Charleston. Margaret gave her consent only after
much hesitation; but Dr. Kirby was from the first firmly in favor of the
plan. He himself would take his ward to the South Carolina city (for
Garda, the Doctor would draw upon his thin purse whether he were able to
afford it or not), she should stay with his accomplished cousin Sally
Lowndes; thus she would have the best opportunity to see the cultivated
society of that dear little town.

This last sentence was partly the Doctor's and partly Winthrop's; the
Doctor had spoken thus reverentially of Charleston society, and Winthrop
thus admiringly of Charleston itself, which had seemed to him, the first
time he beheld it, the prettiest place on the Atlantic coast, a place of
marked characteristics of its own, many of them highly picturesque; his
use of the word "little" had been affectionate, not descriptive. He had
found a charm in the old houses, gable end to the street; in the jealous
walls and great gardens; in St. Michael's spire; in the dusky library,
full of grand-mannered old English authors in expensive old bindings; in
the little Huguenot church; in the old manor-houses on the two rivers
that come down, one on each side, to form the beautiful harbor; in the
rice fields; in the great lilies. The Battery at sunset, with Fort
Moultrie on one hand, the silver beaches round Wagner and the green
marsh where the great guns had been on the other, and Sumter on its
islet in mid-stream--this was an unsurpassed lounging-place; there was
nothing fairer.

The Doctor had been much roused by the breaking of Garda's engagement.
Garda had told him that Evert had not been to blame. But the Doctor was