Down in the depths of Adam’s heart there was a sob, a moan of anguish as his fears were thus corroborated, but his face gave no token of the fierce pain within. It was just as calm as ever, when it turned again to Anna who was talking in her sleep, first of Herbert and then of Adam, begging him to forget that he ever knew the little girl called Anna Burroughs, or carried her over the rifts of snow to the school-house under the hill. It seemed strange that she should grow sick so fast when yesterday she had been comparatively well, but the sudden cold she had taken the previous night, added to the strong excitement under which she had been laboring, combined to spend the energies of a constitution never strong, and the fever increased so rapidly that before the close of the second day more than one heart throbbed with fear as to what the end would be. In spite of her lame ankle Mildred had managed to get into the sick-room, urging Herbert to accompany her, and feeling greatly shocked at his reply that “camphor and medicine were not to his taste.” Herbert had not greeted his bride elect very lovingly, for to her untimely appearance he attributed Anna’s illness and decision. He could change the latter he knew, only give him the chance, but the former troubled him greatly. Anna might die, and then—Herbert Dunallen did not know what then, but bad as he was he would rather she should not die with all that sin against Adam unconfessed, and out in the beech woods where the night before he had planned with her their flight, and where after leaving Mildred he repaired, he laid his boyish head upon the summer grass and _cried_, partly as a child would cry for the bauble denied, partly as an honest man might mourn for the loved one whose life he had helped to shorten. Regularly each morning the black pony from Castlewild was tied at the cottage gate, while its owner made inquiry for Anna. He had discernment enough to see that from the first his visits were unwelcome to Adam Floyd, who he believed knew the contents of the note written him by Anna. But in this last he was mistaken. All Adam knew certainly was gathered from Anna’s delirious ravings, which came at last to be understood by Mildred, who in spite of Mrs. Judge Harcourt’s entreaties or those of her tall, handsome son, George Harcourt, just home from Harvard, persisted in staying at the cottage and ministering to Anna. For a time the soft black eyes of sweet Mildred Atherton were heavy with unshed tears, while the sorrow of a wounded, deceived heart was visible upon her face; but at length her true womanly sense of right rose above it all, and waking as if from a dream she saw how utterly unworthy even of her childish love was the _boy man_, whose society she shunned, until, irritated by her manner, he one day demanded an explanation of her coolness.