On the lake shore, a short distance north of Lincoln Park, Mr. Pfeifer had a charming little villa where he spent the summer months in idyllic drowsiness, exhibiting a spasmodic interest in the culture of European grapes.  Here I found myself one Saturday evening in the middle of June, having accepted the owner’s invitation to stay over Sunday with him.  I rang the door-bell, and inquired for Mr. Pfeifer.  He had unexpectedly been called in to town, the servant informed me, but would return presently; the young lady I would probably find in the garden.  As I was not averse to a tete-a-tete with Miss Hildegard just then, I threaded my way carefully among the flower-beds, whose gorgeous medley of colors gleamed indistinctly through the twilight.  A long bar of deep crimson traced itself along the western horizon, and here and there a star was struggling out from the faint, blue, nocturnal dimness.  Green and red and yellow lights dotted the surface of the lake, and the waves beat, with a slow, gurgling rhythm, against the strand beneath the garden fence; now and then the irrational shrieks of some shrill-voiced little steamer broke in upon the stillness like an inappropriately lively remark upon a solemn conversation.  I had half forgotten my purpose, and was walking aimlessly on, when suddenly I was startled by the sound of human voices, issuing apparently from a dense arbor of grape-vines at the lower end of the walk.

“Why will you not believe me, darling?” some one was saying.  A great rush of emotion—­fear, anguish, hatred, shook my very soul.  “Your scepticism would make Tyndall tear his hair.  Angels have no business to be so sceptical.  You are always doubting me, always darkening my life by your irrational fears.”

“But, Victor,” answered another voice, which was none other than Hildegard’s, “he is certainly a very good man, and would not tell me anything he believed to be untrue.  Why, then, did he warn me so solemnly against you?  Even though I love you, I cannot help feeling that there is something in your past which you hide from me.”

“If you will listen to that white-livered hypocrite, it is useless for me to try to convince you.  But, if you must know it,—­though, mind you, I tell you this only because you compel me,—­I once interfered, because my conscience forced me to do so, in a very disgraceful love-affair of his in Denmark.  He has hated me ever since, and is now taking his vengeance.  I will give you the details some other time.  Now, are you satisfied?”

“No, Victor, no.  I am not.  It is not because I have been listening to others, that I torment you with these ungrateful questions.  Sometimes a terrible dread comes over me, and though my heart rebels against it, I cannot conquer it.  I feel as if some dark memory, some person, either living or dead, were standing between us, and would ever keep you away from me.  It is terrible, Victor, but I feel it even now.”