you have the faculty of making it seem charming. As you please, then. I
will give my explanation to the Colonel as soon as he is ready for
it--as soon, and even before. Shall we go into the garden again until
somebody comes?"

Elizabeth did not answer immediately. She stopped on the threshold where
she had been standing and looked at the speaker with an expression he
could not read. She had thought well of this young man. Was it going to
be that she could no longer believe in him? She did not care so much for
that in itself, but it seemed as if all the world in which she had
moved, the ideal world founded on beauty and nobleness, even if, indeed,
one cornerstone of it were pain, had fallen to pieces about her. Among
so many ruins the ruin of another ideal would not be so very much, but
it would give more pain than was due to itself. As she looked up at him
Edmonson's face lost its exultation. "Perhaps I am mistaken; I ought to
hear before I judge," she thought.

"I would rather stay here," she said at last. "There are footsteps
now--it is Master Archdale." She thought as she spoke that the girlish
figure walking beside him was Katie's, but when the two came nearer she
saw that it was not his cousin to whom Stephen was talking so merrily,
but another of his mother's guests. Katie was in the distance with
Kenelm Waldo. Bulchester had disappeared for the moment--no, he was with
Madam Archdale. As these and others sauntered up to the hall, Edmonson
partially closing the opening by pushing the tapestry behind the
antlers, retreated, and occupied himself with an examination of these
long branches that like a personal weapon had divided the thick
underbrush of his way before him. It was not until most of the party
were in the hall, not until the Colonel had come in with Madam
Pepperell, that he suddenly went forward and drew down the cut tapestry,