It was almost a twilight behind the cool green rain of the willow boughs. Through that verdant mist Haward and Audrey saw the outer world but dimly. “I had a fearful dream last night,” said Audrey. “I think that that must have been why I was to glad to see you come into church to-day. I dreamed that you had never come home again, overseas, in the Golden Rose. Hugon was beside me, in the dream, telling me that you were dead in England: and suddenly I knew that I had never really seen you; that there was no garden, no terrace, no roses, no _you_. It was all so cold and sad, and the sun kept growing smaller and smaller. The woods, too, were black, and the wind cried in them so that I was afraid. And then I was in Hugon’s house, holding the door,--there was a wolf without,--and through the window I saw the mountains; only they were so high that my heart ached to look upon them, and the wind cried down the cleft in the hills. The wolf went away, and then, somehow, I was upon the hilltop.... There was a dead man lying in the grass, but it was too dark to see. Hugon came up behind me, stooped, and lifted the hand.... Upon the finger was that ring you wear, burning in the moonlight.... Oh me!” The remembered horror of her dream contending with present bliss shook her spirit to its centre. She shuddered violently, then burst into a passion of tears. Haward’s touch upon her hair, Haward’s voice in her ear, all the old terms of endearment for a frightened child,--“little maid,” “little coward,” “Why, sweetheart, these things are shadows, they cannot hurt thee!” She controlled her tears, and was the happier for her weeping. It was sweet to sit there in the lush grass, veiled and shadowed from the world by the willow’s drooping green, and in that soft and happy light to listen to his voice, half laughing, half chiding, wholly tender and caressing. Dreams were naught, he said. Had Hugon troubled her waking hours? He had come once to the house, it appeared; but she had run away and hidden in the wood, and the minister had told him she was gone to the Widow Constance’s. That was a long time ago; it must have been the day after she and Mistress Deborah had last come from Fair View. “A long time,” said Haward. “It was a week ago. Has it seemed a long time, Audrey?” “Yes,--oh yes!” “I have been busy. I must learn to be a planter, you know. But I have thought of you, little maid.”