But Georgiana I have never known to sing except at her sewing and alone, as the way of women often is.  During a walk across the summer fields my foot has sometimes paused at the brink of a silvery runlet, and I have followed it backward in search of the spring.  It may lead to the edge of a dark wood; thence inward deeper and deeper; disappearing at last in a nook of coolness and shadow, green leaves and mystery.  The overheard rill of Georgiana’s voice issues from inner depths of being that no human soul has ever visited, or perhaps will ever visit.  What would I not give to thread my way, bidden and alone, to that far region of uncaptured loveliness?

Of late some of the overhead lullabies have touched me inexpressibly.  They beat upon my ear like the musical reveries of future mother hood—­they betoken in Georgiana’s maidenhood the dreaming unrest of the maternal.

One morning not long ago, with a sort of pitiful gayety, her song ran in the wise of saying how we should gather our rose-buds while we may.  The warning could not have been addressed to me; I shall gather mine while I may—­the unrifled rose of Georgiana’s life, body and spirit.

Naturally she and I have avoided the subject of the Cardinal.  But to the tragedy of his death was joined one circumstance of such coarse and brutal unconcern that it had left me not only remorseful but resentful.  As we sat together the other evening, after one of those silences that fall unregarded between us, I could no longer forbear to face an understanding.

“Georgiana,” I said, “do you know what became of the redbird?”

Unwittingly the color of reproach must have lain upon my words, for she answered quickly with yet more in hers,

“I had it buried!”

It was my turn to be surprised.

“Are you sure?”

“I am sure.  I told them where to bury it; I showed them the very spot—­under the cedar.  They told me they had.  Why?”

I thought it better that she should learn the truth.

“You know we can’t trust our negroes.  They disobeyed you.  They lied to you; they never buried it.  They threw it on the ash-pile.  The pigs tore it to pieces; I saw them; they were rooting at it and tearing it to pieces.”

She had clasped her hands, and turned towards me in acute distress.  After a while, with her face aside, she said, slowly,

“And you have believed that I knew of this—­that I permitted it?”

“I have believed nothing.  I have waited to understand.”

A few minutes later she said, as if to herself,

“Many a person would have been only too glad to believe it, and to blame me.”  Then folding her hands over one of mine, she said, with tears in her eyes: 

“Promise me—­promise me, Adam, until we are married, and—­yes, after we are married—­as long as I live, that you will never believe anything of me until you know that it is true!”