Day was breaking. The luster of the moon had failed. Gaunt and grisly the old ruin began to increase in visibility. The full, gray, prosaic light emphasized details, whether of workmanship or wreck, which the silver beams had been inadequate to show. It was difficult to say if the fine points of ornamentation had the more melancholy suggestion in the wanton spoliation where they were within easy reach, or in those heights and sequestered nooks where distance had saved them from the hand of the vandal. The lapse of time itself had wrought but scant deterioration. The tints of the fresco of ceilings and borders were of pristine delicacy and freshness in those rooms where the destroyed hearths had prevented fires and precluded smoke, save that here and there a cobweb had veiled a corner, or a space had gathered mildew from exposure to a shattered window, or a trickling leak had delineated the trace of the falling drops down the decorated wall.

All exemplified the taste of an earlier period, and where paper had been used in great pictorial designs it fared more hardly than had the painting. The vicissitudes of the voyage of Telemachus, portrayed in the hall, were supplemented by unwritten disaster. His bark tossed upon seas riven in gaps and hanging in tatters. The pleasant land where he and his instructive companion met the Island goddess and her train of nymphs, laden with flowers and fruit for their delectation, was cataclysmal with torrential rains and broken abysses. The filial adventurer was flung from the storied cliffs into a Nirvana of blank plaster.

It had required some muscular force and some mental energy to destroy the marble mantel-pieces. Here and there bits of the carving still lay about the floor, the design thus grossly disfigured, showing with abashed effect above the gaping cavity of the torn-out hearth.

The up-to-date man with his glass in his eye, one hand always ready to readjust it, the fingers lightly slipped into the pocket of his trousers, his attitude a trifle canted forward after the manner of the critical connoisseur, was going about, exploring, discriminating and bemoaning. Now and again he was joined by one of his fellow-passengers, who stood with his hat on the back of his head, and gazed with blank, unresponsive eyes, and listened in uncomprehending silence. The interior decoration of the old house represented several periods. The salient fact of wreck and ruin was apparent, however, to the most limited discernment, and the knots of refugees from the Cherokee Rose discussed its woeful condition as they wandered restlessly about. They expressed a doubt whether repair would not cost more than the house was worth, argued on the legal effect of the belated discovery of the quit-claim papers, and contemned the spirit of the men in possession in the last forty years to allow so fine a thing in itself to fall into such a desperate condition, while the lands appurtenant were worked to the extremest capacity of money-making. There was a disposition to deduce from the fact a suspicion on the part of the holders that their title was vulnerable, and a sordid desire to make the most possible out of the property while it was still in possession. It was always Floyd-Rosney’s fate to be in a measure justified of circumstances, yet to seem at fault. The question of mesne profits in case of the recovery of property did not suggest itself for some time, and when it did arise it was submitted that mesne profits were mighty hard to get and often could not be made from the interloper.

“They can make the money out of Floyd-Rosney, though,—he has got money to burn. For one, I don’t care if he does lose. It would be outrageous for him to defend the suit for recovery and plead the statute of limitations,” said the fat man, who did not mince his opinions.

“But he may win out,” said the broker. “Possession is nine-tenths of the law,—and for forty years under a decree of the Chancery court.”

“Forty thousand years would do him no good in the face of that release,” protested another. “It was wrongful possession from the beginning. Floyd-Rosney is a trespasser here and nothing more.”

“But can you call a man a ‘trespasser’ who holds under color of title? His is an adverse possession,” argued the broker.

And the wrangle began anew with revived spirit. It was well, perhaps, that the refugees had a subject of discussion so charged with immediate and general interest, since they had no resource but to roam the old place until breakfast should be announced. After this meal they would resume their fitful wanderings till a boat should be sighted. They had turned out of their comfortable quarters when Captain Treherne had been brought to the restricted inhabited space of the old building, relinquishing the shake-down and the fire to him and his special ministrants.

Now and again a speculation concerning breakfast agitated the group of men, and one venturesome spirit made a journey down the quaking old rear verandah to the kitchen, stepping over gaps where the flooring had been torn up for fuel and walking the rotting sills when the hiatus was too wide to be leaped. His errand to expedite breakfast was, apparently, without result.

“Yes, sah,” said the waiter-cook, into whose gloomy soul morning had yet cast no illuminating ray. “I gwine ter dish up when de breakfast is cooked,—nuver knowed you wanted it raw. Cap’n nuver treated me right,—no range, no cook-fixin’s,—nuthin’—an’ breakfast expected to be smokin’ on de table ’fore de fog is off de river. Naw, Sah,—ef you kin cook it any quicker, why cook it yourself, Sah. I ain’t got no dijections to your cookin’ it.”

Upon his return from his tour of discovery, being earnestly interrogated as to the prospects by his fellow-refugees, the gentleman gave this sage advice: “If you don’t want to have to knock an impudent nigger down you will stay here and eat breakfast when he has a mind to serve it.”

The fog clung to the face of the river. It stood blank and white at the great portal of the house, and sifted through the shattered windows, and silence dominated it. One felt infinitely removed from all the affairs of life. The world was not even a neighbor. Time seemed annihilated. It could not be that yesterday, at this hour, they stood on the stanch deck of the Cherokee Rose, or that only the week before they trod the streets of Memphis, or Vicksburg, or Helena. That white pall seemed to shut off all the possibilities of life, and there was a sort of shock, as of a revulsion of nature, when there came through this flocculent density the sound of a horse’s hoofs on the graveled drive, and then, on the portico, the ponderous measured tread of a man of weight and bulk.

He was in the hall before the group was aware of his entrance. Hale and strong, although of advanced years, well dressed in a sober fashion, grave, circumspect, reticent of manner, he had turned toward the second door before a word of his intent could be asked. A gesture had answered his inquiry for Captain Hugh Treherne. He entered, without knocking, and the door closed on silence. The group in the hall stared at one another, aware, in some subtle way, of a crisis which the simple facts did not explain.

Suddenly a wild cry of defiance rose from within,—a quivering, aged voice full of rancor and of rage.

“I will resist to the death,—begone, begone, sir, before I do you a mischief.”

It was the voice of Colonel Kenwynton, furious, fierce, beyond placation, beyond argument, beyond self-control.

A murmur of remonstrance rose for a moment. Then the group outside followed the example of the stranger and, without ceremony, burst in at the door.

The stranger stood in quiet composure with his back to the fire while the old Colonel, his bushy white eyebrows bent above eyes that flashed all the lightnings of his youth, waved his hand toward the door, exclaiming with an intonation of contempt that must have scathed the most indurated sensibilities, “Begone, sir,—out of the door, if you like, or I will throw you out of the window.” He stamped his foot as if to intimidate a cur. “Begone! Rid us of your intolerable presence.”

Captain Treherne, who had lain all the early morning hours on the rugs and blankets on the floor, seeking to recuperate from his terrible experience of constraint, had arisen with an alertness scarcely to be expected. He laid a restraining hand on the old man’s arm. Colonel Kenwynton placed his own trembling hand over it.

“Captain Treherne is among his friends who will revenge it dearly if you attempt the least injury. Insane! He is most obviously, most absolutely sane, and on that fact I will stake my soul’s salvation. Any attempt at his incarceration,—you despicable trickster, I have no doubt you turn your penny out of this burial alive,—before God, sir, I’ll make you rue it. I will publish you throughout the length and the breadth of the land, and I will beat you with this stick within an inch of your life.”

He brandished his heavy cane, and, despite his age and his depleted strength, he was a most formidable figure as he advanced. Once more Treherne caught at his arm. So tense were its muscles that he could not pull it down, but he hung upon it with all his weight.

The stranger eyed Colonel Kenwynton with the utmost calm, a placidity devoid alike of fear and of the perception of offense. He spoke in a quiet, level tone, with an undercurrent of gentle urgency.

“Sane or insane, Hugh Treherne never intentionally deceived a friend,” he remarked composedly. “Tell him the facts, Captain Treherne,—he deserves to know them.”

He met at the moment Treherne’s eye. A long look passed between them,—a terrible look, fraught with some deep mystery, of ghastly intendment, overwhelming, significant, common to both, which neither would ever reveal. There was in it something so nerve-thrilling, so daunting, that Colonel Kenwynton’s bold, bluff spirit revolted.

“None of your hypnotism here!” he cried, again brandishing his stick. “I will not stand by and see you seek to subjugate this man’s mind with your subtle arts. So much as cast your evil eye upon him again and I will make you swallow a pistol-ball and call it piety. (Where is that damned revolver of mine?)” He clapped his hand vainly to his pistol-pocket.

“Hugh,” the stranger’s tone was even more gently coercive than before. “Tell him, Hugh. He is not a man to delude.”

“Colonel,” cried Treherne, still hanging on the old man’s arm, “this gentleman means me nothing but kindness. He would not,—he could not,—why, don’t you know he was a surgeon in the Stones’ River campaign? For old sake’s sake he would do me no harm.”

Colonel Kenwynton himself looked far from the normal, his white hair blowsing about his face, fiery red, his blue eyes blazing with a bluer flame, his muscles knotted and standing out as he clutched his stick and brandished it.

“I don’t care if he was commander-in-chief, he shall not mesmerize you, if that is what he calls his damnable tricks. Hugh,—forty years! Oh, my dear boy, that I should have lost sight of you for forty years, what with my debts, and my worries, and my shifts to keep a whole roof over my head, and a whole coat on my back. Forty years,—I thought you were dead. I had been told you were dead,—that is your Cousin Thomas’s work,—I’ll haul him over the coals. And you as sane as I am all the time! Begone, sir!” and once more he waved his stick at the stranger. “I will see to it that every process known to the law is exhausted on you! The vials of wrath shall be emptied! Oh, it is too late for apology, for repentance, for sniveling!”

For still the stranger’s manner was mild and gravely conciliatory. “Oh, Hugh,” he said reproachfully, “why don’t you tell him?”

Once more their glances met.

“Colonel,” said Treherne falteringly, “I am not sane. I admit it.”

“I know better,” Colonel Kenwynton vociferated, facing around upon him. “You are as sane as I am, as any man. This is hypnotism. I saw how that fellow looked at you. I marked him well. Why, sanity is in your every intonation.”

Treherne took heart of grace. “But, Colonel, this is a lucid interval. Sometimes I am not myself,—in fact, for many years I was absent.” He used the euphemism with a downcast air, as if he could not brook a plainer phrase. Then, visibly bracing himself, “It was the effects of the old wound,—the sabre cut on the skull. It injured the brain. I have persuasions—obsessions.” His words faltered. His eyes dilated. There was a world of unexpressed meaning in his tone, as he lowered his voice, scarcely moving his lips. “Sometimes I am possessed by the Devil.”

“We will not speak of that to-day,” said the stranger suavely.

“It is impossible!” exclaimed the Colonel dogmatically. “Look at the facts,—you come to me out on that sand-bar to induce me to aid you in the search for the Ducie treasure and title papers, their recovery is due to your effort and, in all probability, the restoration of this great estate to its rightful owners.”

“Ah,” exclaimed the stranger with intense interest. He look elated, inordinately elated.

“And because you had forgotten in the lapse of time—forty years,—the exact spot where you and Archie Ducie hid the box away, and the wind was blowing, and the rain imminent, I put it off—like a fool—and these fiends of river pirates, or gipsies, or what not, got the information from you when you were asleep,—talking in your sleep.”

“Subconscious cerebration,” murmured the alienist.

“And because they did not exactly understand the terms of architecture you used they brought you down here to force you to point out the spot, and bound and gagged you,—oh,—Hugh, my heart bleeds for you!”

“But can’t you think for him a little, Colonel—can’t you advise him? Forty years of seclusion does not fit a man to cope with the world without some preparation for the encounter,—he was in danger of his life, in falling among these thieves. He incurred a jeopardy which I know he esteems even greater. He is on the verge of a most extraordinary cure,—in all my experience I have never known its parallel. Any disastrous chance might yet prevent its completion. Now that he has accomplished all that he so desired to do, can’t you advise him to go back with me to treatment, regimen, safety.”

“Not unless I know what ails him,” said the Colonel stoutly.

Once more the eyes of Treherne and the stranger met, with that dark and dreadful secret between them. Colonel Kenwynton appraised the glance and its subtle significance, and fell to trembling violently.

“It is something that we cannot mention this day,—this day is clear,” said the alienist firmly.

“I cannot go back,—I cannot go back,—and meet it there,” cried Treherne wildly. “It is waiting for me,—where I have known it so long. I shall pass the vestibule, perhaps,—but there in the hall”—he paused, shivering.

“You see that, as yet, you cannot protect yourself in the world, even now, when you are as sane as the Colonel. But, for the accident that brought these people here, you might have been murdered by those miscreants for the secret hiding-place that had slipped your memory. You might have been heedlessly left on the floor bound and gagged to die. It was the merest chance that I happened to think you might be at Duciehurst.”

Treherne was trembling in every fiber. Cold drops of moisture had started on his brow. His eyes were dilated and quickly glancing, as he contemplated this obsession to which neither dared to refer openly, lest the slight bonds that held the mania within bounds, the exhaustion of the spasm of insanity, called the lucid interval, be overstrained and snap at once.

“I believe I would not meet it here, in the world,—away from where it has been so long,” he said doggedly.

“What would you do if you should? You might hurt yourself,—and Hugh, and this you would deplore more, you might injure some one else,” said the doctor.

Treherne suddenly turned, throwing his arms about Colonel Kenwynton in a paroxysm of energy.

“Colonel, lead the way. Go with me, for I would follow you to hell if you led the charge. God knows I have done that often enough. Lead the charge, Colonel!”

“Yes, come with us, Colonel,” said the alienist cordially,—it could but seem a sinister sort of hospitality. “We should be delighted to entertain you for a few days, or, indeed, as long as you will stay. It is not a public institution, but we have a beautiful place,—haven’t we, Hugh?—something very extra in the way of conservatories. Hugh has begun to take much interest in our orchids. It is a good distance, but Mr. Ducie drove me down here from Caxton with his fast horse in less time than I could have imagined.”

“Mr. Ducie?” said Adrian Ducie, with a start. “Where is he? Has he gone?”

The doctor stared as if he himself had taken leave of his senses. “You remember,” he said confusedly, blending the reminder with an air of explanation to the group generally, “that when we had that game of billiards at your hotel in Caxton last evening I asked you a question or two about the Duciehurst estate; I didn’t like to say much, but your replies gave me the clew as to where Captain Treherne had gone after his escape from the Glenrose sanatorium. He had inquired about Duciehurst as soon as he began to recover his memory, and seemed to recur to the subject and to brood upon it. The idea stayed with me all night, for I was very anxious, and about daybreak I took the liberty of rousing you by telephone to ask if the roads here from Caxton were practicable for a motor-car. You remember, don’t you?”

He paused, looking in some surprise at Adrian.

“You told me,” he continued, “that the roads would be impracticable after these rains, and as I disclosed the emergency, in my great perturbation for Captain Treherne’s safety, you offered to drive me down, as you had an exceptionally speedy horse which you kept for your easy access from Caxton to the several plantations that you lease in this vicinity.”

Captain Treherne, the possession of his faculties as complete at the moment as if he had never known the aberrations of a mania, listened with an averse interest and a lowering brow to these details of the preparations made for his capture and reincarceration. The alienist did not seem to observe his manner but went on, apparently at haphazard. “I regretted to put you to so great an inconvenience at this hour, but you relieved my mind by saying that you knew that Captain Treherne had been a valued friend of your uncle’s, and that you not only felt it incumbent on you to be of any service possible to him, but esteemed it a privilege.”

“But where,—where is Randal Ducie now?” asked Adrian, turning hastily to the door.

The doctor’s face was a picture of uncomprehending perplexity. “Why, isn’t this you?” he asked.

“Oh, no. It is my brother,” exclaimed Adrian, amidst a burst of laughter that relieved the tension of the situation. Several followed from the room to witness, at a distance not very discreet, the meeting of the facsimile brothers.

Randal Ducie had hitched the horse and the four-seated phaeton which they had had the precaution to provide to the old rack, and, awaiting the return of the physician, had strolled aimlessly up the pavement through the rolling fog to the steps of the portico. There he was suddenly confronted by the image of himself. He looked startled for a moment; then, with a rising flush and a brightening eye, ascended the flight with an eager step.

“Hello,” said one brother cavalierly.

“Hello yourself,” responded the other.

“Let me show you how the fellows kiss the cheek in old France,” said Adrian.

“Let me show you how the fellows punch the head in old Mississippi,” said Randal.

There was a momentary scuffle, and then, arm in arm and both near to tears, they strolled together down the long portico of their ancestral home with much to say to each other, after their separation, and much to hear.

The group of men at the door, looking laughingly after them, might readily have discriminated the moment of the disclosure of the discovery of the Duciehurst treasure with the release of the mortgage foreclosed so long ago. Randal paused abruptly, facing round upon his brother and apparently listening in stunned amaze. They were too distant for words to be distinguished, but his voice came on the air, loud and excited, in eager questioning. He was, evidently, about to turn within the house, possibly to have the evidence of his eyes to the intendment and validity of this paper, when Adrian, by a gesture, checked him. The fog was beginning to lift, and the figures of the two men were imposed on a vista of green, where the sunlight in a delicate clarity after the rains, in a refined glister of matutinal gold, was beginning to send long glinting beams among the glossy foliage of the magnolias, and to light with reverent tapering shafts the solemn aisles of the weeping willows where the tombstones reared unchanged their mortuary memorials, unmindful of sheen or shadow, of fair weather or foul, even of time, as the years came and went, a monition only of death and a prophecy of eternity.

“There is one thing I must tell you, Ran,” Adrian said, laying both hands on his brother’s shoulders.

Randal threw up his head, excited, expectant, apprehensive.

“She is here,—one of the passengers of the Cherokee Rose.”

“She?” exclaimed Randal in blank mystification. “Who?”

Adrian was embarrassed. It seemed as if even an old love could hardly be of so sluggish a divination,—as if Randal must have probed his meaning. He reflected that it might be some keenly sensitive consciousness that could not yet bear the open recognition of the facts. Between them the subject of the sudden jilting had never been mentioned, save in Randal’s one letter apprising his brother that the engagement was off, by reason of the lady’s change of mind, which came, indeed, later than the item in the Paris journals, chronicling news of interest to Americans sojourning abroad, and giving details of a new betrothal in a circle of great wealth and position. He himself had never known such frenzy of emotion, of rage, and humiliation, and compassion, and pride. The event had racked him with vicarious woe. It had dealt him a wound that would not heal, but now and again burst into new and undreamed of phases of anguish. Even yet he shrank from taking her name on his lips—and to Randal himself, of all people. Yet Randal must be told,—he must not meet her unaware. The pause of indecision continued so long as they stood thus, Adrian’s hands on his brother’s shoulders, that Randal’s eyes dilated with a surprise obviously unaffected. He lifted his own hands to his brother’s elbows, and thus facing each other he said: “What of it? I am in a hurry,—I want to see that release. Who is this ‘she’?”

“Why, Randal,—it is Mrs. Floyd-Rosney,—Paula Majoribanks, that was, and her husband and child.”

There was still a pause, blank of significance.

“Well,” said Randal, meditatively, at length, “they won’t like that quit-claim paper one little bit of a bit.” There was a laugh in his brilliant hazel eyes, and it touched the finely cut corners of his lips. His fresh face was as joyous, as candid, as full of the tender affection of this reunion as if no word of a troubled past had been spoken to jar it.

Oh, that she should come between them on this day when they were so close to each other, Adrian reflected, when absence had made each so dear, when there was so much to say and to do, when separation impended, and time was so short. He felt that he could hardly endure to have their mutual pleasure marred, that he could not brook to see Randal abashed in her presence, and conscious, disconcerted and at a disadvantage before her husband. Above all, and before all, he winced for Randal’s pain in the reopening of these poignant old wounds to bleed and ache anew.

His arms tightened and slipped up from his brother’s shoulders and around his neck. “Oh, Randal, will it hurt you much?”

Randal looked grave. “A lawsuit is always a troublesome, long-drawn-out bother; I shrink from the suspense and the expense. But I am mighty glad to have the chance to be hurt that way.”

“Oh, I meant will it give you pain to meet Paula again as Mrs. Floyd-Rosney?”

“What?” Randal’s hearty young voice rang out with a note of amazement. “Not a bit. What do you take me for?”

“I was afraid—you would feel,” faltered Adrian.

“Is that what’s the matter with you? You look awfully muffish.”

“Well,—as you loved her once,—I thought——”

“That was a case of mistaken identity,” said Randal. “Can’t you realize that it is just because she could prefer another man; that she could think a thought of change; that her plighted faith could be broken; that her love,—or what we called love,—could take unto itself wings and fly away; that she was only an illusion, a delusion, a snare. I never loved the woman she is.”

“She is very beautiful,” hesitated Adrian.

“When I thought her mind and heart matched her face she seemed beautiful to me, too,” said Randal.

“You will think so still.”

“Kid, you know nothing about love. A man truly in love may have been attracted by beauty, but it is not that which holds him. It is a unity of soul; he finds a complement of mind; he has a sense of sympathy and, through thick and thin, a partisan, constant faith in a reciprocal heart. He gets used to the prettiest face and it makes little impression on him,—just as he wouldn’t notice, after a time, a fine costume. She is nothing that I imagined. She is not now, and she never was the ideal I loved. I don’t regret her. Don’t grieve for me, little boy. And now will you be so kind as to take those paws off my neck,—you are half strangling me with your fraternal anxiety. Behold, I will smite you under the fifth rib.”

There was once more a brief, boyish scuffle. Then the two turned and came walking decorously back to the group on the portico. The exterior aspect of the old ruin had an added majesty by daylight, despite the more obvious injuries of wreckage. Its fine proportions, the blended elegance and stateliness of its design, the richness even in the restraint of its ornamentation, all showed with telling effect, apart from the wild work within of the marauders. These details the rude usage it had received could not affect. It might have stood as an imposing architectural example of a princely residence of the date of its erection, and it was impossible to gaze upon it with a sense of possessing it, and feel no glow of gratulation.

“Why, the item of glass alone would be a corker,” a practical man was saying, walking backward down the stone pavement and surveying the great black gaps of the shattered windows.

The two brothers cast a meaning glance at each other, the discussion, of which this was obviously a fragment, evidently looked to a rehabilitation of the mansion under a change of owners, for, certainly, it would seem that Floyd-Rosney had neither the interest nor the associations to induce him to set up his staff of rest here. It was only a straw, but it showed how the wind of opinion set, and the brothers were in the frame of mind to discern propitious omens. The sun was bright on the over-grown spaces of the lawn. The Cherokee rose hedge that divided it from the family graveyard, and continued much further, had spread with its myriad unpruned sprangles beyond the space designed for a boundary, growing many feet wide. Beneath the great arch it described stretched a long tunnel-like arbor, throughout its whole extent, dark, mystic, in the shadow of its evergreen leaves. By reason of some natural attraction which quaint nooks have for children, Marjorie and little Ned had discovered this strange passageway, and were running in and out of the darksome space, with their shrilly sweet cries of pretended fright and real excitement, each time venturing a little farther than before. The mists had lifted from the river, which spread a broad, rippling surface of burnished copper in the sunshine under an azure sky. There was no sign of approaching craft, no curl of smoke above the woods beyond the point to herald deliverance by a steamboat. One of the old ladies had established herself on her suitcase on the topmost step of the flight from the portico, and it would, indeed, have been a swift steamer that could have escaped her vigilance and passed without being signaled.

Adrian paused good-naturedly. “You need give yourself no uneasiness, madam,—it will require half an hour’s time at least for a steamboat to pass this place from the moment that she is sighted,” he said, in polite commiseration.

But the old lady sat tight. “They tell me there is a crazy man in there,” she declared lugubriously. She would leave by the first opportunity.

“He is going presently in a phaeton across the country,” Adrian explained. “There is no possible danger from him, however,—he has only occasional attacks. He is perfectly at himself to-day. But he will not be going on the boat.” This remark was unlucky, as it increased her anxiety to embark.

Randal had lifted his hat after a moment’s pause, and passed on without his brother. He hesitated, looked back, then entered the vestibule, and came suddenly face to face with Paula.

It had been five years since they had met and then it was as lovers. She had not dreamed of seeing him here. She thought him ten miles away at Caxton. She had never been more brilliantly, more delicately beautiful. Her burnished redundant hair that was wont to resemble gold, and to seem so elaborately tended, had now a luminous fibrous effect at the verges of the smooth pompadour roll that had been hastily tossed up from her forehead. She even appeared taller, more slender than usual, since she wore a clinging gown of princess effect, in one piece, and, obviously, of matutinal usage, in more conventional surroundings. The flowing sleeve showed her bare arm from the elbow, exquisitely white and soft. The V-shaped neck gave to view her delicate snowy throat rising from a mist of lace. The strange large flower-pattern cast over a ground of thick sheeny white was an orchid with a gilded verge, and in the mauve and pearl tones she, too, looked like some rare and radiant bloom. Her eyes were sweet and expectant—her step swift. She was on her way to call back the child. She paused suddenly, dumfounded, disconcerted, confronted with the past.

She recognized Randal in one instant, despite his resemblance to his brother, and for her life she could not command her countenance. It was alternately red and white in the same moment. She felt that his confusion would heighten hers, yet she could not forgive his composure, his well-bred, graceful, gracious manner, his clear, vibrant, assured voice when he exclaimed, holding out his hand: “Mrs. Floyd-Rosney—this is an unexpected pleasure. I have this moment heard that you are here. Is that your husband?” For Floyd-Rosney had just issued from the dining-room and was advancing down the hall toward her with an unmistakable, connubial frown. “Will you kindly present me?”

It seemed for a moment as if Floyd-Rosney had never heard of the simple ceremony of an introduction. Paula could not secure and hold his attention. He passed Randal over with a casual, unnoting glance, and began to take her to task in no measured terms.

“Why do you allow the child to chase back and forth in that dark tunnel under the Cherokee rose hedge? He will be scratched to pieces by the briars, the first thing you know. Why is he with that madcap tom-boy, Marjorie Ashley? Where is his nurse, anyhow?”

“Why, she is completely knocked out by the fatigue and excitements,—she is quite old, you remember,” said Paula meekly, seeking to stem his tide of words. “I was just coming out to play nurse myself. But stop a minute. I want to——”

“I won’t stop a minute,—I don’t care what you want,”—her aspect suddenly seemed to strike his attention. “And why do you trick yourself out in such duds at such a time?”

“Because this is so easy to put on,—and I had to dress the baby,” Paula was near to tears. “But I want to——” she mended the phrase,—“This is Mr. Ducie; he wishes to meet you.”

Floyd-Rosney turned his imperious gaze on Ducie with a most unperceiving effect. “Why, of course, I know it is Mr. Ducie,—have you taken leave of your senses, Paula? Mr. Ducie and I have seen enough of each other on this trip to last us the rest of our natural existence. I can’t talk to you now, Mr. Ducie,—if you have anything to say to me you can communicate it to my lawyers; I will give you their address.”

“It is not business. It is an introduction,” explained Paula, in the extremity of confusion, while Randal, placid and impassive, looked on inscrutably. “Mr. Ducie wishes to make your acquaintance.”

“Well, he has got it,—if that is any boon,” Floyd-Rosney stared at her, stupefied.

“But this is the brother,—Mr. Randal Ducie,—the one you have never met.” In Paula’s haste to elude her husband’s impatient interruption she could scarcely speak. Her mouth was full of words, but they tripped and fell over each other in her agitation with slips and grotesque mispronunciations.

“Hoh!” said Floyd-Rosney, permitting himself to be enlightened at last. “Why this thing of twin brothers is no end of a farce.” He shook hands with Randal with some show of conventionality. He, too, was mindful of the past. But so impatient was his temperament with aught that did not suit his play that he was disposed to cavil on the probabilities. “Are you sure,”—then he paused.

“That I am myself,—reasonably sure,” said Randal, laughing. And now that Adrian was coming in at the door Floyd-Rosney surveyed them both as they stood together with a sort of disaffected but covert arrogance.

“Well—I can see no sort of difference,” he declared.

“Oh, the difference is very obvious,” said Paula, struggling to assert her individuality.

“I should thank no man for taking the liberty of looking so much like me,” said Floyd-Rosney, seeking to compass a casual remark. Indeed, but for the pressure of old associations, the necessity of taking into consideration the impression made upon the by-standers, all conversant, doubtless, with the former relations of the parties, for several passersby had paused, attracted by the opportunity for the comparison of the twins side by side, Floyd-Rosney would have dismissed the Messrs. Ducie and their duplicate countenance with a mere word.

“I didn’t expect we should keep up the resemblance,” remarked Adrian. “While I was abroad I did not know what Randal was getting to look like, and, therefore, I didn’t know which way to look myself. But now that we are together we each have the advantage of a model.”

The broker seemed to gravely ponder this strange statement, the others laughed, and Paula saw her opportunity to terminate the contretemps. “I’ll call the baby in,” she said, and slipped deftly past and out into the sunshine.

Paula’s instinct was to remove the cause of her husband’s irritation, not because she valued Floyd-Rosney’s peace of mind or hoped to reinstate his pose of dignity. But she could not adjust herself to her habitual humility with him in Randal Ducie’s presence,—to listen to his instruction, to accept his rebukes, to obey his commands, to laugh at his vague and infrequent jests, to play the abased jackal to his lion. She would efface herself; she would be null; she would do naught to bring down wrath on her devoted head,—but beyond this her strength was inadequate. So she hustled the two children into the house and up the stairs, and out of the great front windows of the hall where she told them to stand on the balcony above the heads of the group below and watch for the appearance of a boat.

Now and then their sweet, reedy tones floated down as they conversed with each other at the extreme limit of their vocal pitch, breaking, occasionally, into peals of laughter. Their steps sounded like the tread of half a dozen pairs of feet, so rapidly and erratically they ran back and forth. At intervals they paused and stood at the iron balustrade, surveying the scene from every point of view, up the river and down the river, and again across, in the zealous discharge of their delegated duty to watch for a boat. Below reigned that luxurious sense of quiet which ensues on the cessation of a turbulent commotion. Groups strolled to and fro on the portico, or found seats on the broad stone sills of the windows that opened upon it. Paula, in her white and lilac floriated house-dress, walked a little apart, pausing occasionally and glancing up to caution the two children on the balcony to be wary how they leaned their weight on the grillwork of the iron balustrade, as some rivet might be rusted and weakened.

Hildegarde had found her rough gray suit impracticable because of the drenching rains of yesterday and was freshly arrayed in a very chic street costume of royal blue broadcloth, trimmed with bands of chinchilla fur, with a muff and hat to match. She was standing near a window, on the sill of which the Major, wrapped in a rug and his overcoat, was ensconced, having been brought forth for a breath of air. He had a whimsical look of discovery on his pallid and wrinkled face. She was recalling to him a world which he had forgotten so long ago that it had all the flavor of a new existence.

“I can’t give you any idea of the scenery en route, Major,”—she was describing a trip to the far west,—“in fact I slept the whole way. You see, my social duties were very onerous last spring. Our club had determined to give twelve dinner dances during the season, and the weather became hot unusually early, and so many people were leaving town that as we were pledged to twelve we were compelled to give four of the dinner dances during the last week and my head was in a whirl. There was the Adelantado ball, too, and several very elaborate luncheons, and two or three teas every afternoon, and what between the indigestion and the two-step lumbago I was in a state of collapse on the journey west.”

“That was a novel campaign,” remarked the old soldier.

“It was a forced march,” declared Hildegarde. “I didn’t revive until I heard dance music again in the Golden City. Let me prop your head up against the window frame on my muff, Major. Oh, yes, it is very pretty,—all soft gray and white.” She made a point of describing everything in detail for his sightless vision. “You might get a nap in this fresh air,—for it is a ‘pillow muff.’ Yes, indeed,” watching his trembling fingers explore its soft densities, “it is very fine, but I won’t mention the awful sum it cost my daddy lest such a conscienceless pillow give you the nightmare.”

The air had all that bland luxurious quality so characteristic of the southern autumn. A sense was rife in the sunlit spaces of a suspension of effort. The growths of the year were complete; the inception of the new was not yet in progress. No root stirred; there was never a drop of sap distilled; not a twig felt the impetus of bourgeonning anew. Naught was apposite to the season save some languorous dream, too delicate, too elusive even for memory. It touched the lissome grace of the willow-wands, bare and silvery and flickering in the imperceptible zephyrs. It lay, swooning with sweetness, in the heart of a late rose which found the changing world yet so kind that not a petal wilted in fear of frost. It silvered the mists and held them shimmering and spellbound here and there above the shining pearl-tinted water. It was not summer, to be sure, but the apotheosis of the departing season. Those far gates of the skies were opening to receive the winged past, and, surely, some bright reflection of a supernal day had fallen most graciously on all the land.

“For my part, since that deal is over and done with by this time, I don’t care how long I have to wait for a boat,—it can neither mar nor make so far as I am concerned,” said the broker, as he puffed his cigar and walked with long, meditative strides up and down the stone pavement.

Floyd-Rosney did not concur in this view. He had expected all the early hours that some of the neighboring negroes would come to the house, attracted by the rumors of the commotions enacted there during the night. Thus he could hire a messenger to take a note or a telephone message to the nearest livery establishment and secure a conveyance for himself and family to the railroad station some ten miles distant. He feared that hours, nay a day or so, might elapse before one of the regular packets plying the river might be expected to pass. Those already in transit had, doubtless, “tied up” during the storm, and now waited till the current should compass the clearance of the dÉbris of the hurricane floating down the river. The steamers advertised to leave on their regular dates had not cast off, in all probability, but lay supine in their allotted berths till the effects of the storm should be past, and thus would not be due here for twelve or twenty-four hours, according to the distance of their point of departure.

As, however, time went on and the old house stood all solitary in the gay morning light as it had in the sad moon-tide, Floyd-Rosney reflected that no one had gone forth from the place except the robbers and the roustabouts who had rowed the party down from the Cherokee Rose, returning thither immediately. It was, therefore, improbable that any rumor was rife of the temporary occupation of the Duciehurst mansion. Hence the absence of curiosity seekers. Moreover, even were the circumstances known, every human creature in the vicinity with the capacity to stand on its feet and open and close its fingers was in the cotton fields this day, for the sun’s rays had already sufficiently dried off the plant, and the industry of cotton-picking, even more than time and tide, waits for nobody. For “cotton is money,—maybe more, maybe less, but cotton is money every time,” according to the old saying. These snowy level fields were rich with coin of the republic. The growing staple was visible wealth, scarcely needing the transmuting touch of trade. No! of all the wights whom he might least expect to see it was any cotton-picker, old or young, of the region.

There being, evidently, no chance of a messenger, he had half a mind, as his impatience of the detention increased, to go himself in search of means of telephonic communication. But, apart from his spirit of leisure and his habit of ease, his prejudices were dainty, and he looked upon the miry richness of the Mississippi soil as if it were insurmountable. To be sure, now and again he affected a day of sylvan sport, when, with dog and gun, he cared as little as might be for mud, or rain, or sleet, or snow; but then, he was caparisoned as a Nimrod, and burrs and briers, stains and adhesive mire, were all the necessary accessories, and of no consideration. In his metropolitan attire to step out knee deep in a soil made up of river detritus, the depth and blackness of which are the boast and glory of the cotton belt, was scarcely to be contemplated if an alternative was possible.

Suddenly a cry smote the air with electrical effect. “A boat! A boat!”