Yea, all her words are sweet and fair, And so, mayhap, is she; But words are naught but molded air, And air and molds are free. Belike, the youth in charmed hall Some fardels sore might miss, Scanning his Beauty's household all, Or ere he gave the kiss! --_The Knyghte's Discourse to his Page_. Now it happened that at Bellevale, the young woman whom we--with the sweet familiarity of art--have had the joy to know as Elizabeth, moved about in unconsciousness, mostly blissful, of the annihilation of Eugene Brassfield. The mails might take to Mrs. Baggs at Hazelhurst vague letters from Judge Blodgett hinting at clues and traces of Florian, preparatory to the restoration of the lost brother; but Brassfield, never anything but a wraith from the mysterious caves of the subconsciousness, was non-existent for evermore, except through the magic of Le Claire. But Elizabeth Waldron, just home from college, full of the wise unwisdom of Smith and twenty-three, and palpitating with the shock which had broken the cables by which she had so long, long ago moored herself in the safe and deep waters of the harbor of a literary and intellectual celibacy, still dreamed of the bubble personality which had vanished, although at times waves of anxious unrest swept across her bosom. For one thing, that epistle of hers, made for his reading on the train--how could she have written it! Elizabeth's cheeks burned when she remembered it. Then she thought of the weeks of chaste dalliance between her acceptance of him and his departure, and of the _elan_ with which he had entered that safe harbor of hers, and swept her from those moorings; and the letter seemed slight return for the rites of adoration he had performed before her. But (and now the cheeks burned once more) why, why had he not written to her as soon as he reached New York? Was he one with whom it was out of sight, out of mind? Or was he one of those business men who can not place anything more delicate than price-quotations on paper? Or--and here the cheeks paled--was he suddenly ill? She wished, after all, that she had not written it! And one day, when a special-delivery letter came and surprised her, she ran out in the winter sun to the summer-house where she had sat so much with him, and read it in quiet. Whereupon the unrest increased, because the letter seemed as unlike Eugene as if he had copied it from some _Complete Letter Writer_.