One evening, late in the summer, the melancholy recluse, who might have forgotten, so seldom did he speak, the sound of his own voice, strolled out to evade the intensity of the heat in the hope of a breath of air from the river. But no, it lay like a sheet of glass, blank of incident--no breeze, no cloud, a pallid monotony of twilight. He had passed through the lawn and came out upon the levee which in the dead levels of that country seems of considerable elevation. He loitered along the summit, finding in the higher ground some amelioration of the motionless atmosphere, for it ceased to harass him, and with his heavy brooding thoughts for company he walked on and on, till at length he was aroused by the perception that in his absorption he had passed the limits of his own domain, and was trespassing on the precincts of a neighboring plantation. This fact was brought to his notice by seeing a bench on the levee which he had not caused to be placed there, and behind it was a mass of Cherokee rose hedge, the growth of which he did not approve on these protective embankments. On it were many waxy white blooms, closing with the waning day, amidst the glossy, deeply green foliage, and seated on the bench was a lady gowned in fleecy white. He scarcely gave her a glance, and with a sense of intrusion he gravely lifted his hat as he was turning away. But she sprang up precipitately and came toward him. “Oh, Randal, _Randal_,” she exclaimed in a voice of poignant sympathy, and said no more. She had burst into a tempest of sobs and cries, and as he came toward her and held out his hand, he felt her tears raining down on it as she pressed it between both her soft palms. “Oh, I know you don’t--you _can’t_--care for my sympathy,” Hildegarde sobbed out brokenly. “It is nothing to you or to _him_, but Randal, he was not a man for _one_ friend, one mourner. Everybody loved him that knew him.” She had collapsed in her former place on the bench, her arm over its back, her head bent upon it, her slender figure shaken by her sobs. “But he would care for your sympathy, he would value your tears, shed for his sake,” Randal said, suddenly. He walked to the bench and sat down beside her. “Only a few hours before--before--he was speaking to me of you. How lovely----” He paused in embarrassment, remembering Adrian’s protest how gladly he would see his brother make her the chatelaine of Duciehurst,--oh, dreams, dreams!--all shattered and gone! “Did he--did he, really?” She lifted her eyes, swimming with tears and irradiated with smiles, that seemed to shine in the dull twilight. “Oh, how I treasure the words!” Then after a long pause--“I was afraid to speak to you, Randal. I do everything wrong!” “You? You do everything right,” he declared. “I am all impulse, you know,” she explained. “Which is so much better than being all design,” he interpolated. “And so I speak without consideration, and might--might hurt people’s feelings.”