in a quaint and sad
surprise.

Vivia looked on all the tender loveliness of the dying year with a
listless eye: waiting, weary waiting, makes the soul torpid to all but
its pain. It was long since there had been any letter from Ray. In all
this oppression of summer and of autumn there had come no report of
Beltran. Her heart had lost its proud assurance, worn beneath the long
strain of such suspense. Could she but have one word from him, half the
term of her own life would be dust in the balance. A thousand
fragmentary purposes were ever flitting through her thought. If she
might know that he was simply living, if she could be sure he wanted
her, she would make means to break through that dividing line, to find
him, to battle by his side, to die at his feet! Her Beltran! so grave,
so good, so heroic! and the thought of him in all his pride and beauty
and power, in all his lofty gentleness and tender passion, in his
strength tempered with genial complaisance and gracious courtesy, sent
the old glad life, for a second, spinning from heart to lip.

The glassy lake began to ruffle itself below her, feeling the pulses of
its interfluent springs, or sending through unseen sluices word of
nightfall and evening winds to all its clustering companions that
darkened their transparent depths in forest-shadows. As she saw it, and
thought how soon now it would ice itself anew, the remembrance rushed
over her, like a warm breath, of the winter's night after their escape
from its freezing pool, when Beltran sat with them roasting chestnuts
and spicing ale before the fire that so gayly crackled up the
kitchen-chimney, a night of cheer. And how had it all faded! whither had
they all separated? where were those brothers now? Heaven knew.

It had been a hard season, these months at the cottage. The price of
labor had been high enough to exceed their means, and so the land had
yielded ill, the grass was uncut on many a meadow; Ray's draft had not
been honored; Vivia had of course received no dividend from her
Tennessee State-bonds, and her peach-orchards were only a place of
forage. Still Vivia stayed at the cottage, not so much by fervent
entreaty, or because she had no other place to go to, as because there
were strange, strong ties binding her there for a while. Should all else
fail, with the ripened wealth of her voice at command, her future was of
course secure from want. But there was a drearier want at Vivia's door,
which neither