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But it was one thing to imagine this while procuring a new and fashionable outfit in San Francisco, and quite another to stand before the “palatial” residence of the Neworths on Rincon Hill, with the consciousness of no other introduction than the memory of the Neworths’ discourtesy on the mountain, and, even in his fine feathers, Bray hesitated. At this moment a carriage rolled up to the door, and Eugenia, an adorable vision of laces and silks, alighted.

Forgetting everything else, he advanced toward her with outstretched hand. He saw her start, a faint color come into her face; he knew he was recognized; but she stiffened quickly again, the color vanished, her beautiful gray eyes rested coldly on him for a moment, and then, with the faintest inclination of her proud head, she swept by him and entered the house.

But Bray, though shocked, was not daunted, and perhaps his own pride was awakened. He ran to his hotel, summoned a messenger, inclosed her note in an envelope, and added these lines:–

DEAR MISS NEWORTH,–I only wanted to thank you an hour ago, as I should like to have done before, for the kind note which I inclose, but which you have made me feel I have no right to treasure any longer, and to tell you that your most generous wish and prophecy has been more than fulfilled.

Yours, very gratefully,

EDMUND BRAY.

Within the hour the messenger returned with the still briefer reply:–

“Miss Neworth has been fully aware of that preoccupation with his good fortune which prevented Mr. Bray from an earlier acknowledgment of her foolish note.”

Cold as this response was, Bray’s heart leaped. She HAD lingered on the summit, and HAD expected a reply. He seized his hat, and, jumping into the first cab at the hotel door, drove rapidly back to the house. He had but one idea, to see her at any cost, but one concern, to avoid a meeting with her father first, or a denial at her very door.

He dismissed the cab at the street corner and began to reconnoitre the house. It had a large garden in the rear, reclaimed from the adjacent “scrub oak” infested sand hill, and protected by a high wall. If he could scale that wall, he could command the premises. It was a bright morning; she might be tempted into the garden. A taller scrub oak grew near the wall; to the mountain-bred Bray it was an easy matter to swing himself from it to the wall, and he did. But his momentum was so great that he touched the wall only to be obliged to leap down into the garden to save himself from falling there. He heard a little cry, felt his feet strike some tin utensil, and rolled on the ground beside Eugenia and her overturned watering-pot.

They both struggled to their feet with an astonishment that turned to laughter in their eyes and the same thought in the minds of each.

“But we are not on the mountains now, Mr. Bray,” said Eugenia, taking her handkerchief at last from her sobering face and straightening eyebrows.

“But we are quits,” said Bray. “And you now know my real name. I only came here to tell you why I could not answer your letter the same day. I never got it–I mean,” he added hurriedly, “another man got it first.”

She threw up her head, and her face grew pale. “ANOTHER man got it,” she repeated, “and YOU let another man”–

“No, no,” interrupted Bray imploringly. “You don’t understand. One of my partners went to the spring that afternoon, and found it; but he neither knows who sent it, nor for whom it was intended.” He hastily recounted Parkhurst’s story, his mysterious belief, and his interpretation of the note. The color came back to her face and the smile to her lips and eyes. “I had gone twice to the spring after I saw you, but I couldn’t bear its deserted look without you,” he added boldly. Here, seeing her face grew grave again, he added, “But how did you get the letter to the spring? and how did you know that it was found that day?”