“I am at work again,” said the farmer, “and so is Nancy.  There’s nothing else for us to do but plod toward home, where Tilly is.”

Regret was more general and sincere than is usual when the transient associations of a resort are broken.  Dr. Sommers’s visage could not lengthen literally, and yet it approached as nearly to a funereal aspect as was possible.  He brightened up, however, when Madge slipped something into his hand “for the chapel.”

They were soon comfortably established in their new quarters, and in the late afternoon Madge was so rested that she took a short walk with Graydon to Sunset Rock, and saw the shadows deepen in the vast, beautiful Kaaterskill Clove.  Then they returned by the ledge path.  At last they entered the wonderful Palenvilie Road, a triumph of practical engineering, and built by a plain mountaineer, who, from the base of the mountain to the summit, made his surveys and sloped his grades by the aid of his eye only.  They had been comparatively silent, and Graydon finally remarked:  “It gives me unalloyed pleasure, Madge, to look upon such scenes with you.  There is no need of my pointing out anything.  I feel that you see more than I do, and I understand better what I do see from the changing expression of your eyes.  Don’t you think such unspoken appreciation of the same thing is the basis of true companionship?”

“Oh, Graydon, what an original thought!”

He bit his lip, and remarked that the evening was growing cool.

At supper and during the evening his vigilance was not rewarded in the slightest degree.  Madge appeared in good spirits, and talked charmingly, even brilliantly at times, but she was exceedingly impersonal, and it was now his policy to follow her slightest lead in everything.  He would prove that her wish was his, as far as he knew it.

“Some day,” he thought, “I shall find a clew to her mystery.”

The next morning Graydon went to the city, and would not return till Friday evening of the following week, for it was now his purpose to resume business.  In the evening he and his brother discussed their affairs, which were beginning to improve all along the line.  Then their talk converged more upon topics connected with this story, and among them was Mr. Wildmere’s suspension.

“His failure don’t amount to very much,” Henry remarked; “he has always done business in a sort of hand-to-mouth way.”

“I am surprised that Arnault permitted him to go down,” Graydon said; “it couldn’t have taken very much to keep him up.”

“It is said that Arnault will have nothing to do with him, and that this fact has hastened his downfall.”

“Well, so she played it too sharp on him, also.  I was in hopes that she would marry and punish him.  I don’t wonder at his course, though; for if he has a spark of spirit he would not forgive her treatment after she learned that you had not failed.  Oh, how blind I was!”