At that stage Horace Townsend left the room, perhaps to pursue the personal search which had so far proved unavailing. He, who had himself been originally observing the young girl with such admiration, saw, or thought that he saw, the materials for a very pretty if not a very painful romance, in which the two would form the chief dramatis personæ. Two or three conditions, he thought, were already evolved: an unmistakable mutual interest--observation and dislike on the part of the aristocratic mother--to be followed by eventual discovery on the part of the weaker and yet more aristocratic brother--an unpleasant _eclaircissement_--coolness born of the very warmth underlying--a parting in pleasant dissatisfaction with themselves and each other--and perhaps a shadow of blended sweet and painful memory over the whole of two after lives! Then the lawyer passed out to the piazza and paced with measured step up and down that promenade and the plateau in front, for perhaps more than half an hour. He might have been entirely absorbed in the contemplation of the possible fortunes of Chicago and Baltimore; and he might have found matter for thought much more personal to himself. At all events the starlight and the coming moon seemed to be company which he failed to find elsewhere; and even the dusky shadows of the bears, deserted by their friends of the sunshine and walking their weary rounds like sentinels, possibly supplied something denied him by humanity. His step was that of a man restless, absorbed and ill at ease; his head had fallen forward on his breast; and once, when he was so far away from the loiterers on the piazza that no ear was likely to catch his words, he muttered something that could scarcely have found an application to the persons of the drama in the parlor. That murmur ran: "I suppose this is the most dishonorable action in my life--planning to betray confidence and take an unfair advantage. Why did _he_ tell me so much before he went to Europe? Pshaw!" and he put his hand to his brow and walked on for a moment in silence. "I will _not_ go back--I _will_ try the experiment--I _will_ win that woman, if I can, under this very name, now that I begin to understand her weakness so well. And if I do--heavens, in what a situation shall I have placed her and myself! And will she ever forgive the deception? No matter!--let the future take care of itself." Either the stars grew less companionable, then, at the thought that some strange deceit was being wrought beneath them, or the soliloquist felt that there yet remained something worth looking after within the parlor, for he looked up at one of the windows of the second story, said: "Ah, no light there, at last!" stepped back to the piazza and once more entered the house and the dancing-room.