“My dear lady,” said he, “this is the end of our journey.  Yonder is my home.  Will you not look at it?”

It was a pale and languid face which greeted him, the face of a woman weary and even now in tears.  Hastily she sought to conceal these evidences of her distress.  It was the first time he had seen her weeping.  Hitherto her courage had kept her cold and defiant, else hot and full of reproofs.  This spectacle gave him concern.  His face took on a troubled frown.

“Come now, do not weep, my dear girl,—­anything but that.”

“What, then, is it you would say?” she demanded.  “It makes little difference to me where you are taking me.”

He threw open the coach door and extended a hand to aid her in alighting.  “Suppose we walk up from here,” he said.  “I know you are tired by the ride.  Besides,” he added, with pride, “I want to show you Tallwoods.”

Scarce touching his hand, she stepped down.  Dunwody motioned to the driver to advance, and in spite of the protests of the maid Jeanne, thus left alone within, the coach rolled on up the driveway ahead of them.

It was in fact a beautiful prospect which lay before the travelers thus arrived.  The sun was low in the west, approaching the rim of the hills, and its level rays lighted the autumn foliage, crossed the great trees, brightened the tall white pillars.  It even illuminated the grounds beyond, so that quite through the body of the house itself its golden light could be seen on the farther slopes, framing the quaint and singular picture thus set apart.  All around rose the wide cup of the valley, its sides as yet covered by unbroken decoration of vivid or parti-colored foliage.  Here and there the vivid reds of the wild sumac broke out in riot; framed lower in the scale were patches of berry vines touched by the frost; while now and again a maple lifted aloft a fan of clean scarlet against the sky,—­all backed by the more somber colors of the oaks and elms, or the now almost naked branches of the lindens.

These enfolding forests gave a look of protectedness to this secret place.  They left a feeling not of discomfort but of shelter.  Moreover, the grass underfoot was soft and still green.  Some sort of comeliness, picturesque though rude, showed in the scant attempts to modify nature in the arrangement of the grounds.  And there, noble and strong, upon a little eminence swelling at the bottom of the valley’s cup, lay the great house, rude, unfinished, yet dignified.  If it seemed just this side of elegance, yet the look of it savored of comfort.  To a woman distracted and wearied it should have offered some sort of rest.  To her who now gazed upon it the sight afforded only horror.  This then was the place.  Here was to be her trial.  This was the battle-ground.

Dunwody lingered, hoping to hear some word of satisfaction.

“The hills are beautiful, the trees are beautiful, and the sky,” she said, at length.  “What God has done here is beautiful.  But God Himself is gone.”