The silver-grey dawn brightened steadily, and in the eastern sky long folds of silky mist began to shred away in thin strips of delicate vapour showing peeps of pale amber between,—­fitful touches of faint rose-colour flitted here and there against the gold,—­and with a sense of relief that the day was at last breaking and that the sky showed promise of the sun, he left his room, and stepping noiselessly into the outside corridor, listened.  Priscilla’s door was wide open—­and as he passed he looked in,—­she was fast asleep.  He could not hear a sound,—­and though he walked on cautious tip-toe along the little passage which led to the room where Innocent slept and waited there a minute or two, straining his ears for any little sigh, or sob, or whisper, none came;—­all was silent.  Quietly he went downstairs, and, opening the hall door, stepped out into the garden.  Every shrub and plant was dripping with wet—­many were beaten down and broken by the fury of the night’s storm, and there was more desolation than beauty in the usually well-ordered and carefully-tended garden.  The confusion of fallen flowers and trailing stems made a melancholy impression on his mind,—­at another time he would scarcely have heeded what was, after all, only the natural havoc wrought by high winds and heavy rains,—­but this morning there seemed to be more than the usual ruin.  He walked slowly round to the front of the house—­and there looked up at the projecting lattice window of Innocent’s room.  It was wide open.  Surprised, he stopped underneath it and looked up, half expecting to see her,—­but only a filmy white curtain moved gently with the first stirrings of the morning air.  He stood a moment or two irresolute, recalling the night when he had climbed up by the natural ladder of the old wistaria and had heard her tell the plaintive little story of her “base-born” condition, with tears in her eyes, and the pale moonshine lighting up her face like the face of an angel in a dream.

“And she had written her first book already then!” he thought—­ “She had all that genius in her and I never knew!”

A deeper brightness in the sky began to glow, and a light spread itself over the land—­the sun was rising.  He looked towards the low hills in the east, and saw the golden rim lifting itself like the edge of a cup above the horizon,—­and as it ascended higher and higher, some fleecy white clouds rolled softly away from its glittering splendour, showing glimpses of tenderest ethereal blue.  A still and solemn beauty invested all the visible scene,—­a sacred peace—­the peace of an obedient and law-abiding nature wherein man alone creates strange discord.  Robin looked long and lovingly at the fair prospect,-the wide meadows, the stately trees warmly tinted with autumnal glory, and thought—­

“Could she be happier than here?—­safe in the arms of love?—­safe and sheltered from all trouble in the home she once idolised?”

He would not answer his own inward query—­and suddenly the fancy seized him to call her by name, as he had called her on that moonlit night long ago, and persuade her to look out on the familiar fields shining in the sunlight of the morning.