Halstead Rowan had ceased looking at the Sphynx and gazed only at its oracle, long before the strange rhapsody concluded; and Margaret Hayley, supported upon the arm of Captain Hector Coles, had more than once shuddered, and at last leaned so heavily upon that arm as to indicate that she must be suddenly ill. To the startled inquiry of the Captain as to the cause of her trembling, she replied in words that indicated her feeling to have been excited by the strangely-patriotic words, and by a request to be taken back at once to the Profile. That request was immediately heeded, and the three passed on up the road, where all the other company had some time preceded them. But one expression more fell from the lips of the strange man, as the three moved away, and Margaret Hayley heard it. "Why, you must be a poet!" said the Illinoisan, when his companion had concluded the rhapsody. "No, I am only a lawyer, and you must not take all that we say for gospel, or even for poetry!" was the reply. "Come, let us go back to the house and imagine that we have had enough of moonlight." The two followed up the road at once and overtook the three but a moment after. As they passed, "H. T." recognized first the shoulder-straps of the officer, and then the figure of the lady upon his left arm. Turning to see her face more closely, his own was for a moment under the full glare of the moon, and Margaret Hayley had a fair opportunity to observe every feature. Shaded as were her own eyes, their direction could not be distinguished; but they really scanned the face before them with even painful earnestness, a low, intense sigh of disappointment and unhappiness escaping her when the inspection had ended. She walked back with Captain Coles and her mother to the door of the Profile, and left them in conversation on the moonlit piazza, escaping up-stairs to her own room and not leaving it again during the evening. What may have been her thoughts and feelings can only be divined from one expression which fell from her lips as she closed the door of her chamber and dropped unnerved upon a chair at the table: "Who can that man be? His voice, and yet not his voice! A shadow of his face, and yet no more like his face than like mine! Am I haunted, or has this trouble turned my brain and am I going mad? Another such evening would kill me, I think!"