know not. Now she hath read my idyl, but all darkened, all awry." The
woman thought: "Cruel and base! You knew that my heart was yours to break,
cast aside, and forget!"

Out of the house the sunlight beat and blinded. Houses of red brick,
houses of white wood; the long, wide, dusty Duke of Gloucester Street;
gnarled mulberry-trees broad-leafed against a September sky, deeply,
passionately blue; glimpses of wood and field,--all seemed remote without
distance, still without stillness, the semblance of a dream, and yet keen
and near to oppression. It was a town of stores, of ordinaries and public
places; from open door and window all along Duke of Gloucester Street came
laughter, round oaths, now and then a scrap of drinking song. To Haward,
giddy, ill at ease, sickening of a fever, the sounds were now as a cry in
his ear, now as the noise of a distant sea. The minister of James City
parish and the minister of Ware Creek were walking before him, arm in arm,
set full sail for dinner after a stormy morning. "For lo! the wicked
prospereth!" said one, and "Fair View parish bound over to the devil
again!" plained the other. "He's firm in the saddle; he'll ride easy to
the day he drinks himself to death, thanks to this sudden complaisance of
Governor and Commissary!"

"Thanks to"--cried the other sourly, and gave the thanks where they were
due.

Haward heard the words, but even in the act of quickening his pace to lay
a heavy hand upon the speaker's shoulder a listlessness came upon him, and
he forbore. The memory of the slurring speech went from him; his thoughts
were thistledown blown hither and yon by every vagrant air. Coming to
Marot's ordinary he called for wine; then went up the stair to his room,
and sitting down at the table presently fell asleep, with his head upon