In the last letter he had written to Giovanna he had told her that he hoped another month at most would see them together again, by which time the house he had in his mind’s eye, a newly built one, would be finished and ready for occupation. In his stroll this evening his footsteps naturally gravitated in the direction of the house in question. His choice of it had in part been determined by reason of its somewhat romantic situation. It was built on a considerable elevation, and from it the eye ranged over a wide extent of wooded undulating country, rising here and there into rocky eminences which owed everything to Nature and nothing to art. A flash of silver on the horizon revealed that the waters of Lake Michigan were no great distance away. To the eyes of Alec there was something in this landscape that was almost Italian in character, and he flattered himself with the fancy that perchance it would please Giovanna and that she might find in it a charm that would serve in some measure to lessen her regrets for the country he had brought her from. After he had reached the house and had ascertained what progress the workmen had made since his last visit, and had settled in his mind after what fashion he would like the garden and shrubbery laid out, he sauntered back towards the town. At the boarding-house he found his partner awaiting him. A business telegram had arrived in the course of the afternoon which necessitated that one or the other of them should set out next morning for Milwaukee, on the opposite shore of the lake. After talking matters over, it was decided that Alec should be the one to undertake the journey. It was now Tuesday, and the probability was that he would be back by Saturday evening at the latest. Next forenoon Travis drove his partner as far as the steamboat wharf at Davisville and there shook hands with him and bade him goodbye. They had no prevision of what the next few days would bring forth. As it fell out, Alec’s business detained him longer than he had thought it would, necessitating, among other things, an up-country journey of two score miles to a place where no railway had yet penetrated. It was not till a late hour on Monday afternoon that he got back to the hotel at Milwaukee, where he had secured a room on his arrival there the previous Wednesday. “A letter for you, Mr. Alexander,” said the hotel clerk to him as he was passing through the hall. “Been here since Saturday.”