Page:Lippincotts Monthly Magazine-40.djvu/18

8 seemed to peep up from beyond the farthest stretch of land, to make sure that the sun had quite gone and it would not be blamed for trespassing. There being nothing in view but a brilliant after-glow on clouds and plains, the lady-moon took courage, and, waxing every moment bolder, stood revealed, at last, in all her meek majestic beauty. Fading sunlight and dawning moonlight seemed in league, this evening, to cast upon the world that subtle spell of which the young and ardent weave their visions. The gentleman that Stella had known and parted from so long ago was no longer anything in her life but a mortifying memory; but his had been the hand that had first opened to her the gates of romance through which there sometimes entered into her heart a nameless feeling that bore her upward out of the reach of the common daily round and made her whole life one supreme aspiration. She felt it keenly now. The world was so gracious and fair and lovely; there was such promise of good to come, in the face of the sky and the sounds of approaching nightfall. And yet how lonely, how utterly left to herself she felt!

A sound quite out of harmony with the tranquil summer evening aroused her. There were footsteps coming. Only one of the boys, perhaps, or one of the tenders of the cattle. She stood up, startled, but not alarmed, and, as she turned to look, a great bound of her heart almost stifled her. Standing a few paces off was a man, evidently a gentleman, dressed in a gray flannel shirt, knickerbockers, and long yarn stockings, a gun on his shoulder and a dog at his heels. A second glance showed Stella that his face was quite unfamiliar: it was only the erect carriage, the startled pause, and the gesture with which his sun-helmet was instantly removed that had made the girl fancy him to be the object of her recent thoughts.

"Excuse me," the stranger said, "but will you tell me if I am in the right road? I am looking for Dr. Gray's."

In the gathering twilight the stranger had not observed the house, though it was quite visible to Stella's eyes, and she answered, promptly,—

"I am Dr. Gray's daughter, and am just going home. I will be glad to show you the way."

The stranger thanked her, and went on to say,—

"My name is Bertrand, I am one of the four purchasers of the Westfields tract of land, and I suppose in this country I may call myself your neighbor in spite of the intervening miles. One of our number has been a little out of sorts, and so two of us volunteered to get a doctor for him. He doesn't know of it, and would have forbidden our doing so, but, as we've never known him to knock under before, we were sufficiently alarmed to make active steps seem expedient.