It was a serene and reassuring scene. Yet upon the spacious piazza, which undeniably contributed to the pervading air of all's well, the stunning information came to Varney that the lady of his quest was not at home. Nor could the maid at the door say where her young mistress had gone, or with whom, or when she would return. Possibly Mrs. Carstairs knew, but Mrs. Carstairs was unwell and could not be disturbed. Miss Carstairs would be sorry to miss him, the kind-hearted girl opined, and would he please leave his name? The young man descended the steps in a state of the flattest depression. Disappointment, he reflected bitterly, crowded upon the heels of disappointment on this anticlimactic afternoon which yet should have been, in a bigger sense, so gloriously climactic. He had missed his train, and with it his honorable confession to Mr. Carstairs; missed Higginson; last and worst of all--it seemed to him now that this was all that mattered in the least--he had missed Miss Carstairs. In sooth, the world was all awry. But at the gate, a thought came to him, radiant as a heavenly messenger. Miss Carstairs was at her seamstress's on the Remsen road. Had she not told him with her own lips that she was to be there at this hour? He made a _Te Deum_ of the click of the gate, and turned northward a face which bore record of an inner splendor. He had set out to see Miss Carstairs in order to ask of her if she knew the whereabouts, in Hunston or New York, of the fair-spoken yet elusive Higginson. But with every step he found the force of this errand weakening within him. The memory of that gentleman's villany, so burning a moment since, grew steadily fainter and more inconsequential. Failing to locate him, he would of course make a precautionary round of the newspaper offices in New York that night. At the worst, he told himself with the swift fading of his anger, there was only a remote risk of any unpleasant aftermath. Why, the thing was over and done with--let by-gones be by-gones. As for those other matters supposed to be upon his mind--hints of approaching trouble for himself, and the knowledge of Mr. Carstairs's bitter disappointment over the collapse of his all but triumphant scheme--he could not for the life of him give them any attention whatever. A far nearer and more vital matter was pressing upon his mind and heart.