Stephen awoke late the next morning. As he lay with eyes closed, half asleep, half awake, the image of his partner of the evening sweetly drifted into his dreamy brain, and called up a wealth of associations on which he continued to dwell with rare pleasure. But the ominous suggestion that her heart could not possibly be free, that perhaps some gay officer, or brilliant member of Howe's staff, or a gallant French official, many of whom had now infested the town, was a favored contestant in the field, filled his mind with the thoughts of dread possibilities, and chased away the golden vision that was taking shape. He sat upright and, pulling aside the curtains of the little window that flanked his bed, he peered into the garden behind the house. The birds were singing, but not with the volume or rapture which is their wont in the early morning. The sun was high in the heavens and flung its reflecting rays from the trees and foliage; whence he concluded that the morning was already far advanced and that it was well past the hour for him to be astir. And what a day it was! One of those rare July days when the tints of the earth and the hues of the sky though varied in color, seem to blend in one beautiful and harmonious whole. The cypress and the myrtle, emblems of deeds of virtue and renown, had already donned their summer dress. The many flowers bowed gently under the weight of the flitful butterfly, or the industrious bee, or tossed to and fro lightly in the arms of the morning breeze. Overhead maples, resplendent in their fabric of soft and delicate green, arched themselves like fine-spun cobwebs, through which filigree the sun projected his rays at irregular and frequent intervals, lending only an occasional patch of sunlight here and there to the more exposed portions of the garden. But nature had no power to drive Marjorie's image from his mind. Try as he would, he could not distract his attention to the many problems which ordinarily would have engaged thoughts. What mattered it to him that the French fleet was momentarily expected, or that the Continental Congress was again meeting in the city, or that he had met with certain suspicious looking individuals during the course of the day! There was yet one who looked peculiarly suspicious and who was enveloped, as far as his knowledge was concerned, in a veil of mystery of the strangest depth. She, indeed, was a flower too fair to blush unseen or unattached. His own unworthiness confounded him.