But when a fortnight passed without an answer to her letter, the showers of melody subsided.  Shadows of old doubts began to creep over the inward sunshine; though she tried to drive them away by recalling Gerald’s promise to try to secure her safety by making a compromise with her father’s creditors.  And were not the new arrangements at Magnolia Lawn a sign that he had accomplished his generous purpose?  She was asking herself that question for the hundredth time, as she sat looking out on the twilight landscape, when she heard a well-known voice approaching, singing, “C’est l’amour, l’amour, l’amour, qui fait le monde a la ronde”; and a moment after she was folded in Gerald’s arms, and he was calling her endearing names in a polyglot of languages, which he had learned from her and Floracita.

“So you are not very angry with me for going there and finding out your secret,” inquired she.

“I was angry,” he replied; “but while I was coming to you all my anger melted away.”

“And you do love me as well as ever,” said she.  “I thought perhaps so many handsome ladies would fall in love with you, that I should not be your Rosa munda any more.”

“I have met many handsome ladies,” responded he, “but never one worthy to bear the train of my Rosa Regina.”

Thus the evening passed in conversation more agreeable to them than the wittiest or the wisest would have been.  But it has been well said, “the words of lovers are like the rich wines of the South,—­they are delicious in their native soil, but will not bear transportation.”

The next morning he announced the necessity of returning to the North to complete some business, and said he must, in the mean time, spend some hours at the plantation.  “And Rosa dear,” added he, “I shall really be angry with you if you go there again unless I am with you.”

She shook her finger at him, and said, with one of her most expressive smiles:  “Ah, I see through you!  You are planning some more pleasant surprises for me.  How happy we shall be there!  As for that rich uncle of yours, if you will only let me see him, I will do my best to make him love me, and perhaps I shall succeed.”

“It would be wonderful if you did not, you charming enchantress,” responded he.  He folded her closely, and looked into the depths of her beautiful eyes with intensity, not unmingled with sadness.

A moment after he was waving his hat from the shrubbery; and so he passed away out of her sight.  His sudden reappearance, his lavish fondness, his quick departure, and the strange earnestness of his farewell look, were remembered like the flitting visions of a dream.

CHAPTER XI.

In less than three weeks after that tender parting, an elegant barouche stopped in front of Magnolia Lawn, and Mr. Fitzgerald assisted a very pretty blonde young lady to alight from it.  As she entered the parlor, wavering gleams of sunset lighted up the pearl-colored paper, softened by lace-shadows from the windows.  The lady glanced round the apartment with a happy smile, and, turning to the window, said:  “What a beautiful lawn!  What superb trees!”