orgetfully indifferent. Mr. Raleigh surveyed her with
interest during the light table-talk. He had been possessed with a
restless wish to see her once more, to ascertain if she had yet any
fraction of her old power over him; he had all the more determinedly
banished himself from the city,--to find her in the country. Now he
sought for some trace of what had formerly aroused his heart. He rose
from table convinced that the woman whom he once loved with the whole
fervor of youth and strength and buoyant life was no more, that she did
not exist, and that Mr. Raleigh might experience a new passion, but his
old one was as dead as the ashes that cover the Five Cities of the
Plain. He wondered how it might be with her. For a moment he cursed his
inconstancy; then he feared lest she were of larger heart and firmer
resolve than he,--lest her love had been less light than his; he could
scarcely feel himself secure of freedom,--he must watch. And then stole
in a deeper sense of loneliness than exile and foreign tongues had
taught him,--the knowledge of being single and solitary in the world,
not only for life, but for eternity.

The evening was passed in the recitation of affairs by himself and his
cousins alone together, and until a week completed its tale of dawns and
sunsets there was the same diurnal recurrence of question and answer.
One day, as the afternoon was paling, Rite came.

Mr. Raleigh had fallen asleep on the vine-hidden seat outside the
bay-window, and was awakened, certainly not by Mrs. Laudersdale's
velvets trailing over the drawing-room carpet. She was just entering,
slow-paced, though in haste. She held out both of her beautiful arms. A
little form of airy lightness, a very snow-wreath, blew into them.

"_O ma maman! Est ce que c'est toi_," it cried. "_O comme tu es douce!
Si belle, si molle, si chere!_" And the fair head was lying beneath the
dark one, the face hidden in the bent and stately neck.

Mr. Raleigh left his seat, unseen, and betook himself to another abode.
As he passed the drawing-room door, on his return, he saw the mother
lying on a lounge, with the slight form nestled beside her, playing with
it as some tame leopardess might play with her silky whelp. It was
almost the only portion of the maternal nature developed within her.

It seemed as if the tea-hour were a fated one. Mr. Raleigh had been out
on the water and was late. As he entered, Rite sprang up,
half-overturning her chair, and ran