hours.

Virgie often wondered what he could be thinking about, but she did not
feel like questioning him, lest he should refer again to the painful topic
of his leaving her.

One day, however, coming into the room suddenly, she saw her mother's
bible in his hands, and she was sure there were tears in his eyes. She
appeared not to notice either his employment or his emotion, but soon
stole softly away again, and went weeping up to her own room.

After that he busied himself with writing a great deal, and she felt sure
that he was making arrangements for her of which he had spoken on that
stormy evening. A great dread came over her at the thought of being left
alone in the world; and yet, in spite of all, she looked forward to the
return of Mr. Heath with more of pleasure and anticipation than she had
known for many a year.

Thus more than a week went by, and one afternoon Virgie, her father being
asleep and the house oppressively still, took her book and went out to a
little nook back of her cottage, where she was in the habit of going to
study, and where Chi Lu had built a rustic seat for her beneath a great
pine tree that grew out of a cleft in the mountain.

But she could not concentrate her thoughts upon the page before her; they
went roving after a coal black steed and its handsome rider, until finally
her book dropped from her hands, her eyes fixed themselves dreamily upon
the lofty, far-off peaks of the Humboldt Mountains, and she was lost to
time and place--everything save her own delightful musings.