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astonishment and half a smile. And yet she was like a picture, a
dream,--a materialization of one's most fanciful imaginings,--like
anything, in fact, but the palpable flesh and blood she evidently was,
standing only a few feet before him, whose hurried breath he could see
even now heaving her youthful breast.

His own breath appeared suspended, although his heart beat rapidly as
he stammered out: "I beg your pardon--I thought--" He stopped at the
recollection that this was the SECOND time he had followed her.

She did not speak, although her parted lips still curved with their
faint coy smile. Then she suddenly lifted her right hand, which had
been hanging at her side, clasping some long black object like a stick.
Without any apparent impulse from her fingers, the stick slowly seemed
to broaden in her little hand into the segment of an opening disk, that,
lifting to her face and shoulders, gradually eclipsed the upper part of
her figure, until, mounting higher, the beautiful eyes and the yellow
rose of her hair alone remained above--a large unfurled fan! Then
the long eyelashes drooped, as if in a mute farewell, and they too
disappeared as the fan was lifted higher. The half-hidden figure
appeared to glide to the gateway, lingered for an instant, and vanished.
The astounded Dick stepped quickly into the road, but fan and figure
were swallowed up in the darkness.

Amazed and bewildered, he stood for a moment, breathless and irresolute.
It was no doubt the same stranger that he had seen before. But WHO was
she, and what was she doing there? If she were one of their Spanish
neighbors, drawn simply by curiosity to become a trespasser, why had she
lingered to invite a scrutiny that would clearly identify her? It was
not the escapade of that giddy girl which the lower part of her face had
suggested, for such a one would have giggled and instantly flown; it was
not the deliberate act of a grave woman of the world, for its sequel
was so purposeless. Why had she revealed herself to HIM alone? Dick
felt himself glowing with a half-shamed, half-secret pleasure. Then he
remembered Cecily, and his own purpose in coming into the garden. He
hurriedly made a tour of the walks and shrubbery, ostentatiously calling
her, yet seeing, as in a dream, only the beautiful eyes of the stranger
still before him, and conscious of an ill-defined remorse and disloyalty
he had never known before. But Cecily was not there; and again he
experien