As she stood panting in the shelter, a man's voice addressed her, and his hand was laid upon her shoulder.
"How you tremble!"
The voice sounded, in that balmy October night, sweet and mellow as the dropping of its over-ripe leaves. The female did indeed tremble violently.
"Look, look! I am followed," she whispered.
The man stepped a pace forward, peered through the oak branches, and stole cautiously to her side again.
"It is Mellen!"
She darted away, dragging her shawl from the grasp that man had fastened upon it,—away under the old oak, and along the outskirts of the grove. She paused a moment in breathless terror at the narrowest point of the lawn, then darted across it, huddling the skirt of her ball dress up with one hand, and sweeping the dead leaves in winrows after her with the fringes of her shawl. She avoided the conservatory, for Tom was still visible through its rolling waves of glass—and, turning to the servants' entrance, ran up a flight of dark stairs into the shaded lights of a chamber. She flung the heavy shawl breathlessly on a couch, shook the snowy masses of her dress into decorous folds, and stole to the window on tip-toe, where she stood, white and panting for breath, watching the lawn and grove, with wild, eager eyes, as if she feared her footsteps in the leaves might have been detected even in the darkness.