Mr. McLean laughed.

“Now, John, you’re not making mischief?”

“No, child, I am preventing it.”  And therewith the worthy man, dropping the wax on the envelope, imprinted it with a Scotch crest, and put out the light “That’s off my mind!” said he.

At last September came; a few more weeks, and they would separate, perhaps, to the four corners of the earth.  Mr. Raleigh arrived one afternoon at the Bawn, and finding no one to welcome him,—­that is to say, Mrs. Laudersdale had gone out, and Helen Heath was invisible,—­he betook himself to a solitary stroll, and, by a short cut through the woods, to the highway, and just before emerging from the green shadows he met Mrs. Laudersdale.

“Whither now, Wandering Willie?” said she; for, singularly enough, they seemed to avoid speaking each other’s name in direct address, using always some title suggested by their reading or singing, or some sportive impromptu.

“I am going to take the road.”

“Like a gallant highwayman?” And without more ado, and naturally enough, she accompanied him.

The conversation, this afternoon, was sufficiently insignificant; indeed, Mrs. Laudersdale always affected you more by her silence than her speech, by what she was rather than by what she said; and it is only the impression produced on her by this walk with which we have any concern.

The road, narrow and winding in high banks fringed with golden-rod and purple asters, was at first completely shadowed,—­an old, deep-rutted, cross country road, birch-trees shivering at either side, and every now and then a puff of pine-breath drifting in between.  After a time it rose gradually into the turnpike, and became a long, dusty track, stretching as far as the eye could see, a straight, dazzling line, burnt white by summer-heats, powdered by travel.  There was no wind stirring; the sky was lost in a hot film stained here and there with sulphurous wreaths; the distant fields, skirted by low hills, were bathed in an azure mist; nearer, a veil of dun and dimmer smoke from burning brush hung motionless; around their feet the dust whirled and fell again.  Bathed in soft, voluptuous tints, hazed and mellowed, into what weird, strange country were they hastening?  What visionary land of delight, replete with perfume and luxury, lay ever beyond?—­what region rich, unknown, forbidden, whose rank vegetation steamed with such insidious poison?  And on what arid, barren road, what weary road,—­but, alas, long worn and beaten by the feet of other wayfarers! a road that ran real and strong through this noxious and seducing mirage!

A sudden blast of wind lifted a cloud of dust from before them and twisted it down among the meadows; the sun thrust aside his shroud and burnt for an instant on a scarlet maple-bough that hung in premature brilliance across the way.  The hasty color, true and fine, was like a spell against enchantment; it was the drop that tested the virtue of this chemistry and proved it naught.