, with
yellow trails of color dragging in the west: a sullen stillness in the
woods and farms; only, in fact, that dark, inexplicable hush that precedes
a storm. But Lois, coming down the hill-road, singing to herself, and
keeping time with her whip-end on the wooden measure, stopped when she
grew conscious of it. It seemed to her blurred fancy more than a deadening
sky: a something solemn and unknown, hinting of evil to come. The
dwarf-pines on the road-side scowled weakly at her through the gray; the
very silver minnows in the pools she passed flashed frightened away, and
darkened into the muddy niches. There was a vague dread in the sudden
silence. She called to the old donkey, and went faster down the hill, as
if escaping from some overhanging peril, unseen. She saw Margaret coming
up the road. There was a phaeton behind her, and some horsemen: she jolted
the cart off into the stones to let them pass, seeing Mr. Holmes's face in
the carriage as she did so. He did not look at her; had his head turned
towards the gray distance. Lois's vivid eye caught the full meaning of the
woman beside him. The face hurt her: not fair, as Polston called it: vapid
and cruel. She was dressed in yellow: the color seemed jeering and mocking
to the girl's sensitive instinct, keenly alive to every trifle. She did
not know that it is the color of shams, and that women like this are the
most deadly of shams. As the phaeton went slowly down, Margaret came
nearer, meeting it on the road-side, the dust from the wheels stifling the
air. Lois saw her look up, and then suddenly stand still, holding to the
fence, as they met her. Holmes's cold, wandering eye turned on the little
dusty figure standing there, poor and despised. Polston called his eyes
hungry: it was a savage hunger that sprang into them now; a gray shadow
creeping over his set face, as he looked at her, in that flashing moment.
The phaeton was gone in an instant, leaving her alone in the muddy road.
One of the men looked back, and then whispered something to the lady with
a laugh. She turned to Holmes, when he had finished, fixing her light,
confusing eyes on his face, and softening her voice.

"Fred swears that woman we passed was your first love. Were you, then, so
chivalric? Was it to have been a second romaunt of 'King Cophetua and the
Beggar Maid'?"

He met her look, and saw the fierce demand through the softness and
persiflage. He gave it no answer, but, turning to her, kindle