"And you were here at seven; you could have covered some ground in four hours?" "Perhaps--I don't know," she said, her voice taking up its old quality again. "Don't ask me--I ran all the way." Her face was quite pale as she removed her hands from her eyes, and her breath came as quickly as if she had just finished that race for life. "Then you think I am safe here?" she added, after a pause. "Perfectly--until they find you are _not_ in Yolo. Then they'll look here. And _that's_ the time for you to go _there_." Teresa smiled timidly. "It will take them some time to search Yolo--unless," she added, "you're tired of me here." The charming _non sequitur_ did not, however, seem to strike the young man. "I've got time yet to find a few more plants for you," she suggested. "Oh, certainly!" "And give you a few more lessons in cooking." "Perhaps." The conscientious and literal Low was beginning to doubt if she were really practical. How otherwise could she trifle with such a situation? It must be confessed that that day and the next she did trifle with it. She gave herself up to a grave and delicious languor that seemed to flow from shadow and silence and permeate her entire being. She passed hours in a thoughtful repose of mind and spirit that seemed to fall like balm from those steadfast guardians, and distill their gentle ether in her soul; or breathed into her listening ear immunity from the forgotten past, and security for the present. If there was no dream of the future in this calm, even recurrence of placid existence, so much the better. The simple details of each succeeding day, the quaint housekeeping, the brief companionship and coming and going of her young host--himself at best a crystallized personification of the sedate and hospitable woods--satisfied her feeble cravings. She no longer regretted the inferior passion that her fears had obliged her to take the first night she came; she began to look up to this young man--so much younger than herself--without knowing what it meant; it was not until she found that this attitude did not detract from his picturesqueness that she discovered herself seeking for reasons to degrade him from this seductive eminence.