“No, no,” said Audrey hurriedly, and shook her head. A vague and formless trouble had laid its cold touch upon her heart; it was as though she saw a cloud coming up, but it was no larger than a man’s hand, and she knew not what it should portend, nor that it would grow into a storm. He was strange to-day,--that she felt; but then all her day since the coming of Evelyn had been sad and strange. The shaft of sunshine was gone from the stage, and all the house was in shadow. Audrey descended the two or three steps leading into the pit, and Haward followed her. Side by side they left the playhouse, and found themselves in the garden, and also in the presence of five or six ladies and gentlemen, seated upon the grass beneath a mulberry-tree, or engaged in rifling the grape arbor of its purple fruit. The garden was a public one, and this gay little party, having tired of the Indian spectacle, had repaired hither to treat of its own affairs. Moreover, it had been there, scattered upon the grass in view of the playhouse door, for the better part of an hour. Concerned with its own wit and laughter, it had caught no sound of low voices issuing from the theatre; and for the two who talked within, all outward noise had ranked as coming from the distant, crowded fields. A young girl, her silken apron raised to catch the clusters which a gentleman, mounted upon a chair, threw down, gave a little scream and let fall her purple hoard. “’Gad!” cried the gentleman. One and another exclaimed, and a withered beauty seated beneath the mulberry-tree laughed shrilly. A moment, an effort, a sharp recall of wandering thoughts, and Haward had the situation in hand. An easy greeting to the gentlemen, debonair compliments for the ladies, a question or two as to the entertainment they had left, then a negligent bringing forward of Audrey. “A little brown ward and ancient playmate of mine,--shot up in the night to be as tall as a woman. Make thy curtsy, child, and go tell the minister what I have said on the subject he wots of.” Audrey curtsied and went away, having never raised her eyes to note the stare of curiosity, the suppressed smile, the glance from eye to eye, which had trod upon her introduction to the company. Haward, remaining with his friends and acquaintances, gathered grapes for the blooming girl and the withered beauty, and for a little, smiling woman who was known for as arrant a scandalmonger as could be found in Virginia. CHAPTER XVIII A QUESTION OF COLORS Evelyn, seated at her toilette table, and in the hands of Mr. Timothy Green, hairdresser in ordinary to Williamsburgh, looked with unseeing eyes at her own fair reflection in the glass before her. Chloe, the black handmaiden who stood at the door, latch in hand, had time to grow tired of waiting before her mistress spoke. “You may tell Mr. Haward that I am at home, Chloe. Bring him here.”