The night air, rising slightly, bent back the flame of the candles, around which moths were fluttering, and caused strange shadows upon the walls. They were thick about the curtained bed whereon had died the elder Haward,--a proud man, choleric, and hard to turn from his purposes. Into the mind of his son, sitting staring at these shadows, came the fantastic notion that amongst them, angry and struggling vainly for speech, might be his father’s shade. The night was feverish, of a heat and lassitude to foster grotesque and idle fancies. Haward smiled, and spoke aloud to his imaginary ghost. “You need not strive for speech,” he said. “I know what you would say. _Was it for this I built this house, bought land and slaves?... Fair View and Westover, Westover and Fair View. A lady that will not wed thee because she loves thee! Zoons, Marmaduke! thou puttest me beside my patience!... As for this other, set no nameless, barefoot wench where sat thy mother! King Cophetua and the beggar maid, indeed! I warrant you Cophetua was something under three-and-thirty!_” Haward ceased to speak for his father, and sighed for himself. “Moral: Three-and-thirty must be wiser in his day and generation.” He rose from his chair, and began to walk the room. “If not Cophetua, what then,--what then?” Passing the table, he took up the miniature again. “The villain of the piece, I suppose, Evelyn?” he asked. The pure and pensive face seemed to answer him. He put the picture hastily down, and recommenced his pacing to and fro. From the garden below came the heavy odor of lilies, and the whisper of the river tried the nerves. Haward went to the window, and, leaning out, looked, as now each night he looked, up and across the creek toward the minister’s house. To-night there was no light to mark it; it was late, and all the world without his room was in darkness. He sat down in the window seat, looked out upon the stars and listened to the river. An hour had passed before he turned back to the room, where the candles had burned low. “I will go to Westover to-morrow,” he said. “God knows, I should be a villain”-- He locked the picture of Evelyn within his desk, drank his wine and water, and went to bed, strongly resolved upon retreat. In the morning he said, “I will go to Westover this afternoon;” and in the afternoon he said, “I will go to-morrow.” When the morrow came, he found that the house lacked but one day of being finished, and that there was therefore no need for him to go at all.