Soon after tea I met Veronica in the hall, with a note in her hand.  She stopped and hesitatingly said that she was going to send for Temperance; she wanted her while Mr. Somers stayed.

“Your forethought astonishes me.”

“She is a comfort always to me.”

“Do you stand in especial need of a comforter?”

She looked puzzled, laughed, and left me.

Temperance arrived that evening, in time to administer a scolding to Fanny.

“That girl needs looking after,” she said.  “She is as sharp as a needle.  She met me in the yard and told me that a man fit for a nobleman had come on a visit.  ‘It may be for Cass,’ says she, ’and it may not be.  I have my doubts.’  Did you ever?” concluded Temperance, counting the knives.  “There’s one missing.  By jingo! it has been thrown to the pigs, I’ll bet.”

When Ben made a show of going, we asked him to stay longer.  He said “Yes,” so cordially, that we laughed.  But it hurt me to see that he had forgotten all about my going to Belem.  “I like Surrey so much,” he said, “and you all, I have a fancy that I am in the Hebrides, in Magnus Troil’s dwelling; it is so wild here, so naive.  The unadulterated taste of sea-spray is most beautiful.”

“We will have Cass for Norna,” said Verry; “but, by the way, it is you that must be of the fitful head; have you forgotten that she is going to Belem soon?”

“I shall remember Belem in good time; no fear of my forgetting that ace—­ancient spot.  At least I may wait till your father goes to Boston, and we can make a party.  You will be ready, Cassandra?  I wrote Adelaide yesterday that you were coming, and mother will expect you.”

It often stormed during his visit.  We had driving rains, and a gale from the southeast, oceanward, which made our sea dark and miry, even after the storm had ceased and patches of blue sky were visible.

Our rendezvous was in the parlor, which, from the way in which Ben knocked about the furniture, cushions, and books, assumed an air which somehow subdued Veronica’s love for order; she played for him, or they read together, and sometimes talked; he taught her chess, and then they quarreled.  One day—­a long one to me,—­they were so much absorbed in each other, I did not seek them till dusk.

“Come and sing to me,” called Ben.

“So you remember that I do sing?”

“Sing; there is a spell in this weird twilight; sing, or I go out on the rocks to break it.”

He dropped the window curtains and sat by me at the piano, and I sang: 

  “I feel the breath of the summer night,
      Aromatic fire;
  The trees, the vines, the flowers are astir
      With tender desire.

  “If I were alone, I could not sing,
      Praises to thee;
  O night! unveil the beautiful soul
      That awaiteth me!”

“A foolish song,” said Veronica, pulling her hair across her face.  No reply.  She glided to the flower-basket, broke a rosebud from its stalk, and mutely offered it to him.  Whether he took it, I know not; but he rose up from beside me, like a dark cloud, and my eyes followed him.