Neither Colonel Royall nor old Judy ever vouchsafed any explanation of this room, its quaintly beautiful furniture and the apparently unchanging spotlessness of the muslin curtains and the white valance of the mahogany four-poster. Once, when she was a child, Diana had crept in there and hidden under the bed, but hearing the key turn in the lock when old Judy left the room, her small heart had quaked with fear and she had remained crouching in a corner, still under the bed, not daring to look out lest she should indeed see a beautiful and ghostly lady seated at the polished toilet-table, or hear her step upon the floor. She stayed there three hours, then terror and loneliness prevailed and she fancied she did hear something; it was, perhaps, the rustle of wings, for she had been told that angels had wings, and if her mamma were dead she was, of course, an angel. The rustle, therefore, of imaginary wings was more than Diana could bear, and she lifted up her voice and wept. They had been searching the house for her, and it was her father who drew her out from under the bed and carried her, weeping, to the nursery. Then he spoke briefly but terribly to the mammy in charge, and Diana never crept under the white valance again. She remembered that scene to-day as the carriage drove on under the tall shade trees, and she remembered that Colonel Royall had never looked so ill at this time of the year since the time when he was stricken with fever in midsummer, when she was barely fifteen. Then he had been out of his head for three days and she had heard him call some one “Letty!” and then cry out: “God forgive me--there is the child!” He had been eighteen months recovering, and she saw presages of illness in his face; his eyes were resting sadly and absently, too, on the familiar landscape. Diana winced, again conscious of the shut door. It is hard to wait on at the threshold of the heart we love. They were crossing the bridge when a long silence was broken. Below them some negroes were chanting in a flatboat, and their voices were beautiful. “Away down South in de fields of cotton, Cinnamon seed and sandy bottom, Look away, look away, Look away, look away!” “Pa,” said Diana suddenly, “do you believe in the verdict?” The colonel took off his hat and pushed back his thick white hair. “I reckon I’ve got to, Di,” he replied reluctantly. “Then you think Jacob is a bully and a fraud,” said Diana, with the unsparing frankness of youth. “Heaven forbid!” said the colonel gently. “I thought you wanted me to marry him,” she pursued, victory in her eye. The colonel reddened. “Diana,” he said, “I don’t want you to marry anybody.” She smiled. “Thank you,” she said; “after all, the verdict has done some good in this State, Colonel Royall.”