Audrey

The other laughed again; then dismissed the question with a wave of his

hand, and pulled out a great gold watch with cornelian seals. "Carter

swears that Dr. Contesse hath a specific that is as sovereign for the gout

as is St. Andrew's cross for a rattlesnake bite. I've had twinges lately,

and the doctor lives hard by. Evelyn, will you rest here while I go

petition Æsculapius? Haward, when I have the recipe I will return, and

impart it to you against the time when you need it. No, no, child, stay

where you are! I will be back anon."

Having waved aside his daughter's faint protest, the Colonel departed,--a

gallant figure of a man, with a pretty wit and a heart that was

benevolently gay. As he went down the path he paused to gather a sprig of

lilac. "Westover--Fair View," he said to himself, and smiled, and smelled

the lilac; then--though his ills were somewhat apocryphal--walked off at a

gouty pace across the buttercup-sprinkled green toward the house of Dr.

Contesse.

Haward and Evelyn, left alone, kept silence for a time in the quiet room

that was filled with late sunshine and the fragrance of flowers. He stood

by the window, and she sat in a great chair, with her hands folded in her

lap, and her eyes upon them. When silence had become more loud than

speech, she turned in her seat and addressed herself to him.

"I have known you do many good deeds," she said slowly. "That gentleman

that was here is your servant, is he not, and an exile, and unhappy? And

you sent him away comforted. It was a generous thing."

Haward moved restlessly. "A generous thing," he answered. "Ay, it was

generous. I can do such things at times, and why I do them who can tell?

Not I! Do you think that I care for that grim Highlander, who drinks my

death in place of my health, who is of a nation that I dislike, and a

party that is not mine?"

She shook her head. "I do not know. And yet you helped him."

Haward left the window, and came and sat beside her. "Yes, I helped him. I

am not sure, but I think I did it because, when first we met, he told me

that he hated me, and meant the thing he said. It is my humor to fix my

own position in men's minds; to lose the thing I have that I may gain the

thing I have not; to overcome, and never prize the victory; to hunt down a

quarry, and feel no ardor in the chase; to strain after a goal, and yet

care not if I never reach it."

He took her fan in his hand, and fell to counting the slender ivory

sticks. "I tread the stage as a fine gentleman," he said. "It is the part

for which I was cast, and I play it well with proper mien and gait. I was

not asked if I would like the part, but I think that I do like it, as much

as I like anything. Seeing that I must play it, and that there is that

within me which cries out against slovenliness, I play it as an artist

should. Magnanimity goes with it, does it not, and generosity, courtesy,

care for the thing which is, and not for that which seems? Why, then, with

these and other qualities I strive to endow the character."