So the summer wore away, and September came to produce a new aspect of beauty in the landscape, by tinging the fading flowers and withering leaves with various shades of brown and crimson, purple and orange.  One day, early in the month, when Tom came with the carriage, she told him to drive to Magnolia Lawn.  She had long been wishing to revisit the scene where she had been so happy on that bright spring day; but she had always said to herself, “I will wait till Gerald comes.”  Now she had grown so weary with hope deferred, that she felt as if she could wait no longer.

As she rode along she thought of improvements in the walks that she would suggest to Gerald, if they ever went there to live, as he had intimated they might.  The servants received her with their usual respectful manner and wondering looks; but when she turned back to ask some question, she saw them whispering together with an unusual appearance of excitement.  Her cheeks glowed with a consciousness that her anomalous position was well calculated to excite their curiosity; and she turned away, thinking how different it had been with her mother,—­how sheltered and protected she had always been.  She remembered how very rarely her father left home, and how he always hastened to return.  She stood awhile on the veranda, thinking sadly, “If Gerald loves me as Papasito loved Mamita, how can he be contented to leave me so much?” With a deep sigh she turned and entered the house through an open window.  The sigh changed at once to a bright smile.  The parlor had undergone a wondrous transformation since she last saw it.  The woodwork had been freshly painted, and the walls were covered with silvery-flowered paper.  Over curtains of embroidered lace hung a drapery of apple-green damask, ornamented with deep white-silk fringe and heavy tassels.  “How kind of Gerald!” murmured she.  “He has done this because I expressed a wish to live here.  How ungrateful I was to doubt him in my thoughts!”

She passed into the chamber, where she found a white French bedstead, on which were painted bouquets of roses.  It was enveloped in roseate lace drapery, caught up at the centre in festoons on the silver arrow of a pretty little Cupid.  From silver arrows over the windows there fell the same soft, roseate folds.  Her whole face was illuminated with happiness as she thought to herself:  “Ah!  I know why everything has a tinge of roses.  How kind of him to prepare such a beautiful surprise for me!”

She traversed the garden walks, and lingered long in the sequestered bower.  On the floor was a bunch of dried violets which he had placed in her belt on that happy day.  She took them up, kissed them fervently, and placed them near her heart.  That heart was lighter than it had been for months.  “At last he is going to acknowledge me as his wife,” thought she.  “How happy I shall be when there is no longer any need of secrecy!”

The servants heard her singing as she traversed the garden, and gathered in groups to listen; but they scattered as they saw her approach the house.