She darted away, dragging her shawl from the grasp that man had fastened upon it,--away under the old oak, and along the outskirts of the grove. She paused a moment in breathless terror at the narrowest point of the lawn, then darted across it, huddling the skirt of her ball dress up with one hand, and sweeping the dead leaves in winrows after her with the fringes of her shawl. She avoided the conservatory, for Tom was still visible through its rolling waves of glass--and, turning to the servants' entrance, ran up a flight of dark stairs into the shaded lights of a chamber. She flung the heavy shawl breathlessly on a couch, shook the snowy masses of her dress into decorous folds, and stole to the window on tip-toe, where she stood, white and panting for breath, watching the lawn and grove, with wild, eager eyes, as if she feared her footsteps in the leaves might have been detected even in the darkness. CHAPTER XIII. WHO COULD IT HAVE BEEN? The evening passed drearily enough to Grantley Mellen. He was in no spirits for society and the gay bustle; the lights, the music, the constraint he was forced to put upon himself, and the cheerfulness he was obliged to assume, only wearied him. A strange and unaccountable dread of his approaching journey possessed him. It had grown stronger as the days passed on, and that night was more powerful than ever. Sometimes he was almost ready to think it a presentiment; perhaps he was never to return from that voyage; some unseen danger awaited him in that distant land, and he should die there, far from the sound of every voice, the touch of every hand that was dear to him. He was vexed with himself for indulging in this superstitious weakness; but, in spite of all his efforts, the thought would recur again and again, oppressing him with a dreary sense of desolation that made the brilliant scene around absolutely repulsive. He left the lighted rooms at last, and passed through the hall on to the piazza which overlooked the sea. It was a beautiful evening; the moonlight, escaping from under a bank of clouds, lay silvery and broad upon the lawn, and broke a path of diamonds across the rippling waters, lighting them up to wonderful splendor. The air was balmy and soft as spring, the wind rippled pleasantly among the trees, but there was no melody in its tones to his ear; it seemed only a repetition of the mournful warning which had haunted his thoughts. He walked on across the lawn, anxious to get beyond the sound of the music and gayety which followed him from the house, for it jarred upon his ears with deafening discordance. He entered a little thicket of bushes and young trees, in the midst of which rose up a dark, funereal-looking cypress, that always waved its branches tremulously, however still the air might be, and seemed to be oppressed with a trouble which it could only utter in faint moaning whispers.