Oh! the torture of it to the poor young wife standing watching them, with heart on fire in the deep shadow of the crimson-hearted passion-flowers that quivered on the intervening vines. The letter she held in her hand slipped from her fingers into the bushes all unheeded. She had but one thought--she must get away. The very air seemed to stifle her; her heart seemed numb--an icy band seemed pressing round it, and her poor forehead was burning hot. It did not matter much where she went, nobody loved her, nobody cared for her. As softly as she came, she glided down the path that led to the entrance-gate beyond. She passed through the moonlighted grounds, where the music and fragrance of the summer night was at its height. The night wind stirred the pink clover and the blue-bells beneath her feet. Her eyes were hot and dry; tears would have been a world of relief to her, but none came to her parched eyelids. She paid little heed to the direction she took. One idea alone took possession of her--she must get away. "If I could only go back to dear old Uncle John," she sighed. "His love has never failed me." It seemed long years back since she had romped with him, a happy, merry child, over the cotton fields, and he had called her his sunbeam during all those years when no one lived at Whitestone Hall and the wild ivy climbed riotously over the windows and doors. Even Septima's voice would have sounded so sweet to her. She would have lived over again those happy, childish days, if she only could. She remembered how Septima would send her to the brook for water, and how she sprinkled every flower in the path-way that bore her name; and how Septima would scold her when she returned with her bucket scarce half full; and how she had loved to dream away those sunny summer days, lying under the cool, shady trees, listening to the songs the robins sang as they glanced down at her with their little sparkling eyes. How she had dreamed of the gallant young hero who was to come to her some day. She had wondered how she would know him, and what were the words he first would say! If he would come riding by, as the judge did when "Maud Muller stood in the hay-fields;" and she remembered, too, the story of "Rebecca at the Well." A weary smile flitted over her face as she remembered when she went to the brook she had always put on her prettiest blue ribbons, in case she might meet her hero.