u. But do you
blame me for being curious?"

"I do not blame you at all."

"And some time," I added, "if I do not tease you, you may tell me of
your own accord. May I not hope so?"

"Perhaps," she murmured.

"Only perhaps?"

Looking up, she read my face with a quick, deep glance. "Yes," she
said, "I think I may tell you--some time;" and so our conversation
ended, for she gave me no chance to say anything more.

That night I don't think even Dr. Pillsbury could have put me to
sleep, till toward morning at least. Mysteries had been my accustomed
food for days now, but none had before confronted me at once so
mysterious and so fascinating as this, the solution of which Edith
Leete had forbidden me even to seek. It was a double mystery. How, in
the first place, was it conceivable that she should know any secret
about me, a stranger from a strange age? In the second place, even if
she should know such a secret, how account for the agitating effect
which the knowledge of it seemed to have upon her? There are puzzles
so difficult that one cannot even get so far as a conjecture as to the
solution, and this seemed one of them. I am usually of too practical a
turn to waste time on such conundrums; but the difficulty of a riddle
embodied in a beautiful young girl does not detract from its
fascination. In general, no doubt, maidens' blushes may be safely
assumed to tell the same tale to young men in all ages and races, but
to give that interpretation to Edith's crimson cheeks would,
considering my position and the length of time I had known her, and
still more the fact that this mystery dated from before I had known
her at all, be a piece of utter fatuity. And yet she was an angel, and
I should not have been a young man if reason and common sense had been
able quite to banish a roseate tinge from my dreams that night.

CHAPTER XXIV.

In the morning I went down stairs early in the hope of seeing Edith
alone. In this, however, I was disappointed. Not finding her in the
house, I sought her in the garden, but she was not there. In the
course of my wanderings I visited the underground chamber, and sat
down there to rest. Upon the reading table in the chamber several
periodicals and newspapers lay, and thinking that Dr. Leete might be
interested in glancing over a Boston daily of 1887, I brought one of
the papers with me into the house when I came.

At breakfast I met Edith. She blushed as she greeted me, but was
perf