As has been said, the Putnam place adjoined that of Dr. Sanford. A brook flowed between, crossed by a rustic bridge, and fringed with a tangled thicket of elder, roses, wild clevis, and ground-nut vines, with here and there a tall clump of alders wading knee-deep into the water. Not far from the bridge, in the field behind the Putnam mansion, stood a monster elm in the branches of which Mr. Putnam had had an arbor constructed by the placing of a flooring upon two nearly horizontal branches, and surrounding this with a railing. The arbor was reached by means of ladders, and was so completely hidden by the boughs as to be invisible from below.
The wild asters blooming by the brook attracted Patty's steps; and she stood for some moments leaning upon the railing of the bridge, looking down into the water, or out over the lovely scene about her.
It was one of those soft days of early September which are like a memory or a dream. The sky was cloudless, the grass and foliage yet untouched by frost, but beginning to show russet tints of ripeness. The only sound which came to the maiden's ears was the soft purling of the brook beneath her feet as it flowed among the sedges and alders. Now and then a dragon-fly flitted like a flash across; and occasionally a minnow, with the gleam of a dark back or red-tipped fin, darted through the dusky water.
Patty was out of sympathy with the peaceful scene. Such a restless mood had seized her as she seldom experienced. She was dissatisfied with every thing, most of all with Tom Putnam. Since the night of the thunder-storm, she had scarcely seen her lover. The day following he had called while she was riding with Burleigh Blood. The next day he had seen her, indeed, but in a room full of people. For a moment they were alone together one morning soon after, but the interview had been unsatisfactory. Women demand from the men they love their utmost. A man having in some passionate moment shown his capability for utter devotion, his lady feels a vague terror when he falls below this high-wrought mood, as he inevitably must. Perhaps it is the hereditary instinct of a sex that has found men too apt to reach a crisis of passion, only to fall away from it fatally and forever. It is difficult for women to understand a love which flows silently in an underground channel. The lawyer had been too much like his ordinary self, and too little like the ardent lover who had kissed Patty's hand so hotly that August night. He seemed to assume in addressing her that they were betrothed, and she resented this as presumption.
"I am not engaged to you," she said pettishly. "Goodness knows where you got that idea!"
"I dreamed it," he returned; "and the dream was so pleasant, that I chose to believe it."
"It could only have been a nightmare," she retorted.
Immediately after, he had been called from home on business, returning only in time to make arrangements for the fishing expedition; and, as Patty was out when he called, she had not seen him since his return.
"Heigh-ho!" sighed Patty, lifting her eyes from the water to glance toward the Putnam house half-buried in trees. "Heigh-ho! I am getting as stupid as an owl. Now that good fortune has come, I suppose Tom will repair the house. How aunt Pamela will cackle over it! She is always sighing over the departed grandeur of the place."
Aunt Pamela Gilfether was the widowed sister of Tom Putnam's father. She moaned over the fallen fortunes of her race as the autumn wind wails over the departed summer. Her great desire had been that her nephew should marry, and build up the family; and the worthy lady had a standing grievance against Miss Sturtevant for presuming to attempt to insnare Tom by her fascinations. Whenever Miss Sturtevant was mentioned, aunt Pamela was wont to remark contemptuously upon her "blue chany eyes," by which she was understood to indicate that Flora had eyes like those of a china doll.