Far away from outrage and disaster, many a weary stretch of travel, the meadow-side cottage basked in the afternoon sunlight of late Indian-summer.  All the bare sprays of its shadowing limes quivered in the warmth of their purple life against a divine depth of heaven, and the woody distances swathed themselves in soft blue smoke before the sighing south-wind.

Round the girl who sat on the low door-stone, with idle hands crossed before her, puffs of ravishing resinous fragrance floated and fainted.  Two butterflies, that spread their broad yellow wings like detached flakes of living sunshine stolen out of the sweet November weather, fluttered between the glossy darkness of her hair and a little posthumous rose, that, blowing beside the door, with time only half to unfold its white petals, surveyed the world in a quaint and sad surprise.

Vivia looked on all the tender loveliness of the dying year with a listless eye:  waiting, weary waiting, makes the soul torpid to all but its pain.  It was long since there had been any letter from Ray.  In all this oppression of summer and of autumn there had come no report of Beltran.  Her heart had lost its proud assurance, worn beneath the long strain of such suspense.  Could she but have one word from him, half the term of her own life would be dust in the balance.  A thousand fragmentary purposes were ever flitting through her thought.  If she might know that he was simply living, if she could be sure he wanted her, she would make means to break through that dividing line, to find him, to battle by his side, to die at his feet!  Her Beltran! so grave, so good, so heroic! and the thought of him in all his pride and beauty and power, in all his lofty gentleness and tender passion, in his strength tempered with genial complaisance and gracious courtesy, sent the old glad life, for a second, spinning from heart to lip.

The glassy lake began to ruffle itself below her, feeling the pulses of its interfluent springs, or sending through unseen sluices word of nightfall and evening winds to all its clustering companions that darkened their transparent depths in forest-shadows.  As she saw it, and thought how soon now it would ice itself anew, the remembrance rushed over her, like a warm breath, of the winter’s night after their escape from its freezing pool, when Beltran sat with them roasting chestnuts and spicing ale before the fire that so gayly crackled up the kitchen-chimney, a night of cheer.  And how had it all faded! whither had they all separated? where were those brothers now?  Heaven knew.

It had been a hard season, these months at the cottage.  The price of labor had been high enough to exceed their means, and so the land had yielded ill, the grass was uncut on many a meadow; Ray’s draft had not been honored; Vivia had of course received no dividend from her Tennessee State-bonds, and her peach-orchards were only a place of forage.  Still Vivia stayed at the cottage, not so much by fervent entreaty, or because she had no other place to go to, as because there were strange, strong ties binding her there for a while.  Should all else fail, with the ripened wealth of her voice at command, her future was of course secure from want.  But there was a drearier want at Vivia’s door, which neither that nor any other wealth would ever meet.