Perhaps half an hour went by.  She rose from the sofa upon which she had thrown herself, face down, pressed her hands to her temples, then, moving to the table, wrote there a word or two, folded and addressed the paper, and rang the bell.  Young Isham appeared and she gave him the note, bidding him, in a voice that by an effort she made natural, to hasten upon his errand.  When he was gone, she stooped and gathered from the floor the fallen letters—­the President’s and Lewis Rand’s—­and laid them in a drawer.  The touch seemed to burn her, for she moaned a little.  She wandered for a moment uncertainly, here and there in the room, then, returning to the sofa, fell upon her knees beside it, stretched out her arms along the silk, and laid her head upon them.  “O God!  O God!” she said, but made no other prayer.

The minutes passed.  There was a step, the sound of the gate-latch, and a hand upon the knocker.  She rose from her knees, and was standing by the table when, in another moment, the drawing-room door opened to admit Ludwell Cary.  He came forward.

“You sent for me”—­He paused, stepped back, and looked at her fully and gravely.  “Something has happened.  Tell me what it is.”

“You know.  You have known all the time.  You knew last summer in the cedar wood!” Her voice broke; she raised her arms above her head, then let them fall with a cry.  “You knew—­you knew!”

“How have you come to know?  No, don’t tell me!”

“I am mad, I think.  A letter came that told me.  I see now how the world must look to madmen.  It is a curious place where we are all strangers—­and yet we think it is our safe home.”

As she turned from him, she reeled.  There was a great chair near, beside the window.  Cary caught her by both hands, forced her to sit down, and drew the curtains apart so that the air of night came fully in.  The quiet street was now deserted; the maple boughs, too, screened the place.  “Look!” he said.  “Look how brightly Venus shines!  All the immense rack of clouds that we had at sunset has vanished.  The box smells like the garden at Fontenoy, where, I make no doubt, Deb and Major Edward are walking up and down, counting the stars.  Yes, I knew, that afternoon in the cedar wood—­but not for happiness itself would I have robbed you of that faith, that confidence—­”

She leaned forward in the great chair, her hands clasped upon its arms, her dark eyes wide upon the night without the window.  “I sent for you because I wished you to tell me all.  I wanted truth as I wanted air!  I want it now.  That day we met in the cedar wood—­you and Uncle Edward talked together.”  She drew a difficult breath.  “It was then that they—­Uncle Dick and Uncle Edward—­began to treat me as though—­as though I had never left home!  It was then—­”

“They feared,” said Cary gently, “for your happiness.”

“I returned to Roselands, and in three days we were to travel across the mountains.  Then at sunset, underneath the beech tree”—­She sat for a moment perfectly still, then turned in her chair and spoke in a clear voice.  “That was why you forced him to challenge you, and that was why you named a distant time and place?  The truth, please.”