"Oh, yes! But I am clear-headed now. Don't come. I really mean it. I don't want you." She slipped down the ladder, leaving him alone. He stood a moment looking at the branches which hid her from his sight, and then flung himself down upon a rustic seat in deep thought. Meanwhile Patty went back towards the brook and her home. She stopped at the bridge as before, but now the vague unrest in her heart was changed to positive pain. It had not been giddiness which had made her white, but a sudden conviction, that, after all, her lover had no passion worth the name. She was very unhappy,--so unhappy, indeed, as to forget to be angry with herself for being so. She saw Hazard Breck coming down the brookside, and looked about for a means of escape from meeting him. At that moment he looked up, and saw her. He involuntarily made a motion, as if half minded to turn back; and instantly a desire arose in Patty to encounter him. Life, like dreams, goes often by contraries; and desires are oftener caught upon the rebound than directly. "Good-afternoon," Patty called, with a fine assumption of gayety. "Good-afternoon," he answered, coming up to her side, and leaning upon the railing of the bridge. "Are you thinking of suicide?" she asked, as he continued to look, not at her, but intently into the water. "No, indeed!" "Then don't look so melancholy, please." "How shall I look?" "I don't much care; only don't have that dreadful dead-and-gone expression." "Shall I grin?" "Of course not!" "Why may I not look melancholy, then?" "Because it does not please me to have you," she said. "Oh!" he retorted. "The trouble is not in me, then, but in your mood." "I am not given to moods. I am _semper idem_." "So is a post." "Thank you!" Patty replied. "You are as complimentary as your uncle." "Uncle Tom? Where did you see him?" "At various places in Montfield all my life." Hazard began to look at her curiously. He had at first noticed nothing strange in her manner, being too much occupied with his own disquietude, having left the house after aunt Pamela had confided to him his uncle's passion. He had been walking along the side of the brook, recalling the thousand signs of this love which he had seen, and yet accounted not at all; and he wondered, man-like, at his own obtuseness to what now seemed so clear. When he met Patty, he was absorbed in counterfeiting indifference; but something in her tone made him perceive at length that she was not her usual self. Perhaps the love in his own heart, whose fruition he had unquestioningly resigned at the words of aunt Pamela, made him clearer sighted. He longed to question her, to tell her of his uncle's love and of his own. His lip trembled with the impetuous words he could not speak, and his eyes were fixed upon her face with an intense gaze which was more than she could bear. "Good-by," she said hastily, and went her way.