Thus her thoughts were gentle, sweet, like the cooing of a mother’s first-born, winsome as his first smile, which makes her forget her hour of travail. A dog bays in the distance, a deer bounds again into the forest—a young man comes from the chase—a smile, a kiss—an— She waked suddenly from her dream. Some one was coming up the street, staring earnestly at the numbers. He was an elderly man, who moved as softly toward the grave as the gentle notes of the flute sinking along the last octave. Yet there was life in his step, and she could see that he handled himself well on the slippery pavement, where the half-melted snow had frozen again. There was a look about his face that touched a chord down in her heart, and the expression he wore as if he, an old man, were almost a youth again, set her once more to dreaming. The bell rang. “A gentleman to see you, ma’am,” said Hilda, entering. “He will not give his name. He says he is from Charleston.” A man in whose eyes an infinite fire seemed burning, entered close on Hilda’s heels. “Mrs. Brooks,” he said, and his voice made her think of the notes of a passion swept violin, “I trust you will pardon my intrusion in this manner, and I scarcely know how to explain it so that it will seem less rude.” He was staring intently at the woman before him. His deep eyes took in the details of her mourning garments, her face with its fine lines of settled sadness and the abundant threads of white sprinkled through the thick brown braids, gathered under her widow’s cap. Her mother’s heart prompted the swift question: “You come from Charleston? Helen—is she—?” “Your daughter is quite well, madam, and safe in the little hamlet of Dunvegan, in North Carolina, whither I—whither she and her aunts were conveyed after the burning of—.” He paused, knowing the thoughts that the name of Columbia would awaken. Sighing deeply, Mrs. Brooks motioned her visitor to a chair and looked at him inquiringly. “I am pleased to see you, sir,” she said courteously; “I knew and loved Charleston well in my girlhood.” “You were, before your marriage, Miss Lezare? Forgive me if I seem rudely inquisitive.” “Yes, sir, Lezare was my maiden name.” “Ah, yes—Lezare of Camellia? While you were living there was there a man—Masters, Charles Masters?” “Stop, sir!” she interrupted. “What right have you to bring back that name into my life—what—?” “Has it then left your life?” he asked, with a touch of fear in his voice. “Forgive me if I have given you pain, madam. My honor is my pledge that I mean no wrong. It is necessary—do you understand?—absolutely necessary for me to proceed.” She was silent and seemed as one lost in a deep forest who seems to see a face in the darkness about.