"Herbert!" she called, softly.
"What do you wish?" said he, pausing.
The woman hesitated, and at length said, "The girl—her child I mean; is she——?"
Again the man whispered in her ear. "None can say," he added aloud, "that I have not been a kind parent to my children."
"I'm glad there's some virtue in you," said the woman, turning toward the quiet mansion that stood in almost palace-like magnificence in the midst of the beautiful grounds that surrounded it on all sides. The man lingered behind, and finally left the garden by a path lying in an opposite direction from the one by which he had entered. He bent his steps rapidly in the direction of the river. Either the warmth of the night or his own emotions oppressed him; for, as he gained its banks, he slackened his pace, drew off his cap, and loosened his collar. With arms folded across his chest, he moved slowly along, like one intensely absorbed in some dark and intricate train of thought. Sometimes he muttered to himself, and made strange gestures, or tossed his head with a confident air, as though he saw onward to the success of some plan he concerted. So occupied was he in his own thoughts, that he never saw the tall, gaunt figure of a man, crouching in the shadow of a small linden tree, that stood on the bank of the river, nearly opposite Dilly Danforth's wretched abode, although he passed in so close contact as to brush against the little bundle of sticks the unknown held in his hand, while his deep, sunken eyes glared on the passer till they seemed nearly starting from their sockets.
"'Tis he!" murmured the gazer, when the abstracted one was beyond the sound of his voice. "I must see where he goes;" and, stealing noiselessly to the door of Dilly's abode, he placed the bundle of sticks on her sill, and slowly followed the receding figure.
CHAPTER XX.
"And the clear depths of her dark eye
Were bright with troubled brilliancy,
Yet the lips drooped as with the tear,