"August and his mother are out yonder, it seems," thought Rose. "I will go to them, and give August a glad surprise." Then, with a light heart, the maiden tripped down a grass-lined path toward the summer-house.
She was to encounter a scene she little expected. Soon she was in the vicinity of the cool bower where August and his mother had retired for friendly chat.
"Don't speak that way, Andrew; it hurts me."
It was the voice of a woman, and involuntarily the steps of Rose Alstine halted. Could that be her lover's mother thus addressing her son? The girl was too deeply excited to notice that the name uttered was not that of her lover.
Moving on, Rose soon stood where she could gaze into the summer-house. Then she came to a halt. It was a picture that poor Rose never forgot—that presented to her at that moment.
She saw two persons in the little leaf-embowered room—a man and young woman.
The latter stood with hand clasped about the neck of the young man, who was handsome in the extreme. Was there a handsomer man in Grandon than August Bordine?
Rose did not believe it, and there he stood with that woman's arms about his neck, her pale face upturned to his, the light of a pleading, all-enduring love in her dark eyes.
It was a love scene in every sense of the word.
Rose shuddered and grew white, yet she dared not advance, dared not interrupt the scene presented to her gaze. Eavesdropping was foreign to her nature, yet at that moment it was not in her power to recede, and so she was held in her tracks—compelled to listen to words that rent her heart like death itself.