The next moment he was gone, and leaning against the chimney Maggie
watched with tearful eyes the carriage as it wound up the grassy road.
On the brow of the hill, just before it would disappear from sight, it
suddenly stopped. Something was the matter with the harness, and while
John was busy adjusting it Mr. Carrollton leaned from the window, and,
looking back, started involuntarily as he caught sight of the figure
so clearly defined upon the housetop. A slight suspicion of the truth
came upon him, and kissing his hand he waved it gracefully towards
her. Maggie's handkerchief was wet with tears, but she shook it out in
the morning breeze, and sent to Arthur Carrollton, as she thought, her
last good-by.
Fearing lest her grandmother should see her swollen eyes, she stole
down the stairs, and taking her shawl and bonnet from the table in the
hall ran off into the woods, going to a pleasant, mossy bank not far
from Hagar's cottage, where she had more than once sat with Arthur
Carrollton, and where she fancied she would never sit with him again.
"I don't believe it's for him that I am crying," she thought, as she
tried in vain to stay her tears; "I always intended to hate him, and I
almost know I do; I'm only feeling badly because I won't run away, and
Henry and Rose will go without me so soon!" And fully satisfied at
having discovered the real cause of her grief, she laid her head upon
the bright autumn grass and wept bitterly, holding her breath, and
listening intently as she heard in the distance the sound of the
engine which was bearing Mr. Carrollton away.
It did not occur to her that he could not yet have reached the depot,
and as she knew nothing of a change in the time of the trains she was
taken wholly by surprise when, fifteen minutes later, a manly form
bent over her, as she lay upon the bank, and a voice, earnest and
thrilling in tones, murmured softly, "Maggie, are those tears for me?"
When about halfway to the station Mr. Carrollton had heard of the
change of time, and knowing he should not be in season had turned back
with the intention of waiting for the next train, which would pass in
a few hours. Learning that Maggie was in the woods, he had started in
quest of her, going naturally to the mossy bank, where, as we have
seen, he found her weeping on the grass. She was weeping for him--he
was sure of that. He was not indifferent to her, as he had sometimes
feared, and for an instant he felt tempted to take her in his arms and
tell her how dear she was to him.
"I will speak to her first," he thought, and so he asked if the tears
were for him.