“Never!” was her quick, firm, almost sharply uttered response; “I would die first!”

“But, my daughter—­”

“Father,” she interrupted him, two bright spots suddenly burning on her cheeks, “don’t, I pray you, urge me on this point.  I have courage enough to break, but I will not bend.  I gave him no offence.  What right has he to assume that I was not engaged in domestic duties while he sat talking with you?  He said that he had an engagement in New York.  Very well; there was a sufficient reason for his sudden departure; and I accept the reason.  But why does he remain away?  If simply because I preferred a seat in the arbor to one in the portico, why, the whole thing is so unmanly, that I can have no patience with it.  Write to him, and humor a whim like this!  No, no—­Irene Delancy is not made of the right stuff.  He went from me, and he must return again.  I cannot go to him.  Maiden modesty and pride forbid.  And so I shall remain silent and passive, if my heart breaks.”

It was in the afternoon, and they were sitting in the portico, where, at this hour, Irene might have been found every day for the past week.  The boat from New York came in sight as she closed the last sentence.  She saw it—­for her eyes were on the look-out—­the moment it turned the distant point of land that hid the river beyond.  Mr. Delancy also observed the boat.  Its appearance was an incident of sufficient importance, taking things as they were, to check the conversation, which was far from being satisfactory on either side.

The figure of Irene was half buried in a deep cushioned chair, which had been wheeled out upon the portico, and now her small, slender form seemed to shrink farther back among the cushions, and she sat as motionless as one asleep.  Steadily onward came the boat, throwing backward her dusky trail and lashing with her great revolving wheels the quiet waters into foamy turbulence—­onward, until the dark crowd of human forms could be seen upon her decks; then, turning sharply, she was lost to view behind a bank of forest trees.  Ten minutes more, and the shriek of escaping steam was heard as she stopped her ponderous machinery at the landing.

From that time Irene almost held her breath, as so she counted the moments that must elapse before Hartley could reach the point of view in the road that led up from the river, should he have been a passenger in the steamboat.  The number was fully told, but it was to-day as yesterday.  There was no sign of his coming.  And so the eyelids, weary with vain expectation, drooped heavily over the dimming eyes.  But she had not stirred, nor shown a sign of feeling.  A little while she sat with her long lashes shading her pale cheeks; then she slowly raised them and looked out toward the river again.  What a quick start she gave!  Did her eyes deceive her?  No, it was Hartley, just in the spot she had looked to see him only a minute or two before.  But how slowly he moved, and with what a weary step! and, even at this long distance, his face looked white against the wavy masses of his dark-brown hair.