Pretty Del! Poor Del! Asenath wondered whether she wished that she were like her; she could not quite make out; it would be pleasant to sit on a log and look like that; it would be more pleasant to be watched as Del was watched just now; it struck her suddenly that Dick had never looked like this at her. The hum of their voices ceased while she stood there with her eyes upon them; Del turned her head away with a sudden movement, and the young man left her, apparently without bow or farewell, sprang up the bank at a bound, and crushed the undergrowth with quick, uneasy strides. Asenath, with some vague idea that it would not be honorable to see his face,--poor fellow!--shrank back into the aspens and the shadow. He towered tall in the twilight as he passed her, and a dull, umber gleam, the last of the sunset, struck him from the west. Struck it out into her sight,--the haggard struggling face,--Richard Cross's face. Of course you knew it from the beginning, but remember that the girl did not. She might have known it, perhaps, but she had not. Asenath stood up, sat down again. She had a distinct consciousness, for the moment, of seeing herself crouched down there under the aspens and the shadow, a humpbacked white creature, with distorted face and wide eyes. She remembered a picture she had somewhere seen of a little chattering goblin in a graveyard, and was struck with the resemblance. Distinctly, too, she heard herself saying, with a laugh, she thought, "I might have known it; I might have known." Then the blood came through her heart with a hot rush, and she saw Del on the log, smoothing the red feather of her hat. She heard a man's step, too, that rang over the bridge, passed the toll-house, grew faint, grew fainter, died in the sand by the Everett Mill. Richard's face! Richard's face, looking--God help her!--as it had never looked at her; struggling--God pity him!--as it had never struggled for her. She shut her hands, into each other, and sat still a little while. A faint hope came to her then perhaps, after all; her face lightened grayly, and she crept down the bank to Del. "I won't be a fool," she said, "I'll make sure,--I'll make as sure as death." "Well, where did _you_ drop down from, Sene?" said Del, with a guilty start. "From over the bridge, to be sure. Did you think I swam, or flew, or blew?" "You came on me so sudden!" said Del, petulantly; "you nearly frightened the wits out of me. You didn't meet anybody on the bridge?" with a quick look. "Let me see." Asenath considered gravely. "There was one small boy making faces, and two--no, three--dogs, I believe; that was all." "Oh!" Del looked relieved, but fell silent. "You're sober, Del. Been sending off a lover, as usual?" "I don't know anything about its being usual," answered Del, in an aggrieved, coquettish way, "but there's been somebody here that liked me well enough." "You like him, maybe? It's time you liked somebody, Del."