Haward raised his eyes to hers that were quiet, almost smiling, though darkly shadowed by past pain.  “I will tell you, Evelyn.  Why should not I tell you this, also?...  Four days ago, upon my return to Fair View, I sought and found the woman that I love,—­the woman that, by all that is best within me, I love worthily!  She shrank from me; she listened not; she shut eye and ear, and fled.  And I,—­confident fool!—­I thought, ’To-morrow I will make her heed,’ and so let her go.  When the morrow came she was gone indeed.”  He halted, made an involuntary gesture of distress, then went on, rapidly and with agitation:  “There was a boat missing; she was seen to pass Jamestown, rowing steadily up the river.  But for this I should have thought—­I should have feared—­God knows what I should not have feared!  As it is I have searchers out, both on this side and on the southern shore.  An Indian and myself have come up river in his canoe.  We have not found her yet.  If it be so that she has passed unseen through the settled country, I will seek her toward the mountains.”

“And when you have found her, what then, sir?” cried the Colonel, tapping his snuffbox.

“Then, sir,” answered Haward with hauteur, “she will become my wife.”

He turned again to Evelyn, but when he spoke it was less to her than to himself.  “It grows late,” he said.  “Night is coming on, and at the fall of the leaf the nights are cold.  One sleeping in the forest would suffer ... if she sleeps.  I have not slept since she was missed.  I must begone”—­

“It grows late indeed,” replied Evelyn, with lifted face and a voice low, clear, and sweet as a silver bell,—­“so late that there is a rose flush in the sky beyond the river.  Look! you may see it through yonder window.”

She touched his hand and made him look to the far window.  “Who is it that stands in the shadow, hiding her face in her hands?” he asked at last, beneath his breath.

“’Tis Audrey,” answered Evelyn, in the same clear, sweet, and passionless tones.  She took her hand from his and addressed herself to her father.  “Dear sir,” she said, “to my mind no quarrel exists between us and this gentleman.  There is no reason”—­she drew herself up—­“no reason why we should not extend to Mr. Marmaduke Haward the hospitality of Westover.”  She smiled and leaned against her father’s arm.  “And now let us three,—­you and Maria, whom I protest you keep too long at the harpsichord, and I, who love this hour of the evening,—­let us go walk in the garden and see what flowers the frost has spared.”

CHAPTER XXVI

SANCTUARY

“Child,” demanded Haward, “why did you frighten me so?” He took her hands from her face, and drew her from the shadow of the curtain into the evening glow.  Her hands lay passive in his; her eyes held the despair of a runner spent and fallen, with the goal just in sight.  “Would have had me go again to the mountains for you, little maid?” Haward’s voice trembled with the delight of his ended quest.