As Darrell took leave of Mrs. Dean that night, he said, looking frankly into her calm, kindly face,-- "I am very sorry if I wounded your feelings this afternoon; it was wholly unintentional, I assure you." "You did not in the least," she answered; "it is so long since I have been called by that name it took me by surprise, but it sounded very pleasant to me. My boy, if he had lived, would have been just about your age." "It seemed pleasant to me to call you 'mother,'" said Darrell; "it made me feel less like an outsider." "You can call me so as often as you wish; you are no outsider here; we consider you one of ourselves," she responded, with more warmth in her tones than he had ever heard before. The following morning Darrell accompanied the ladies to church. After lunch he lounged for an hour or more in one of the hammocks on the veranda, listening alternately to Mr. Underwood's comments as he leisurely smoked his pipe, and to the faint tones of a mandolin coming from some remote part of the house. Mr. Underwood grew more and more abstracted, the mandolin ceased, and Darrell, soothed by his surroundings to a temporary forgetfulness of his troubles, swung gently back and forth in a sort of dreamy content. After a while, Kate Underwood appeared, dressed for a walk, and, accompanied by Duke, the two set forth for their mountain ramble, for the time as light-hearted as two children. Upon their return, two or three hours later, while still at a little distance from the house, they saw Mr. Underwood and a stranger standing together on the veranda. The latter, who was apparently about to take his departure, and whom Darrell at once assumed to be Mr. Walcott, was about thirty years of age, of medium height, with a finely proportioned and rather muscular form, erect and dignified in his bearing, with a lithe suppleness and grace in all his movements. He was standing with his hat in his hand, and Darrell, who had time to observe him closely, noting his jet-black hair, close cut excepting where it curled slightly over his forehead, his black, silky moustache, and the oval contour of his olive face, remembered Mr. Underwood's remark of the probability of Spanish blood in his veins.