“Hugh!” she said, kindly.

“Dear Euphra!” he answered, kissing the little hand he held in his.

She looked at him for a little while, and the tears rose in her eyes.

“Hugh, I am a cripple for life.”

“God forbid, Euphra!” was all he could reply.

She shook her head mournfully.  Then a strange, wild look came in her eyes, and grew till it seemed from them to overflow and cover her whole face with a troubled expression, which increased to a look of dull agony.

“What is the matter, dear Euphra?” said Hugh, in alarm.  “Is your foot very painful?”

She made no answer.  She was looking fixedly at his hand.

“Shall I call Jane?”

She shook her head.

“Can I do nothing for you?”

“No,” she answered, almost angrily.

“Shall I go, Euphra?”

“Yes —­ yes.  Go.”

He left the room instantly.  But a sharp though stifled cry of despair drew him back at a bound.  Euphra had fainted.

He rang the bell for Jane; and lingered till he saw signs of returning consciousness.

What could this mean?  He was more perplexed with her than ever he had been.  Cunning love, however, soon found a way of explaining it —­ A way? —­ Twenty ways —­ not one of them the way.

Next day, Lady Emily brought him a message from Euphra —­ not to distress himself about her; it was not his fault.

This message the bearer of it understood to refer to the original accident, as the sender of it intended she should:  the receiver interpreted it of the occurrence of the day before, as the sender likewise intended.  It comforted him.

It had become almost a habit with Hugh, to ascend the oak tree in the evening, and sit alone, sometimes for hours, in the nest he had built for Harry.  One time he took a book with him; another he went without; and now and then Harry accompanied him.  But I have already said, that often after tea, when the house became oppressive to him from the longing to see Euphra, he would wander out alone; when, even in the shadows of the coming night, he would sometimes climb the nest, and there sit, hearing all that the leaves whispered about the sleeping birds, without listening to a word of it, or trying to interpret it by the kindred sounds of his own inner world, and the tree-talk that went on there in secret.  For the divinity of that inner world had abandoned it for the present, in pursuit of an earthly maiden.  So its birds were silent, and its trees trembled not.

An aging moon was feeling her path somewhere through the heavens; but a thin veil of cloud was spread like a tent under the hyaline dome where she walked; so that, instead of a white moon, there was a great white cloud to enlighten the earth, —­ a cloud soaked full of her pale rays.  Hugh sat in the oak-nest.  He knew not how long he had been there.  Light after light was extinguished in the house, and still he sat there brooding, dreaming, in that state of mind in which to the good, good things come of themselves, and to the evil, evil things.  The nearness of the Ghost’s Walk did not trouble him, for he was too much concerned about Euphra to fear ghost or demon.  His mind heeded them not, and so was beyond their influence.