CHAPTER II.
"The truth you speak doth lack some gentleness."-- SHAKSPEARE.
Edward had met and held his desired interview with his business acquaintance, seen him aboard his train, and was standing watching it as it steamed away and disappeared in the distance, when a feminine voice, close at hand, suddenly accosted him.
"O Mr.Travilla! how are you?
I consider myself very fortunate in finding you here." He turned toward the speaker, and was not too greatly pleased at sight of her.
"Ah! good-evening, Miss Deane," he said, taking her offered hand, and speaking with gentlemanly courtesy.

"In what can I be of service to you ?" "By inviting me to Ion to spend the night," she returned laughingly.
"I've missed my train, and was quite in despair at the thought of staying alone over night in one of the miserable little hotels of this miserable little village.

So I was delighted to see your carriage standing there, and you yourself beside it; for, knowing you to be one of the most hospitable of men, I am sure you will be moved to pity, and take me home with you." Edward's heart sank at thought of Zoe, but, seeing no way out of the dilemma, "Certainly," he said, and helped his self-invited guest to a seat in his carriage, placed himself by her side, and bade the coachman drive on to Ion.
"Now, really, this is very good in you, Mr.Travilla," remarked Miss Deane: "there is no place I like better to visit than Ion, and I begin to think it was rather a fortunate mishap--missing my train." "Very unfortunate for me, I fear," sighed Edward to himself.

"The loss of her drive will be a great disappointment to Zoe, and the sight of such a guest far from making it up to her.

I am thankful the visit is to be for only a night." Aloud he said, "I fear you will find it less pleasant than on former occasions,--in fact, rather lonely; as all the family are absent--spending the winter at Viamede, my mother's Louisiana plantation--except my wife and myself." "Ah! but your wife is a charming little girl,--I never can think of her as a woman, you know,--and you are a host in yourself," returned the lady laughingly.
Zoe's callers had left; and she, having donned hat and cloak, not to keep her husband a single moment, was at the window watching for his coming, when the carriage came driving up the avenue, and drew up at the door.
She hurried out, expecting to find no one there but himself, and to be at once handed to a seat in the vehicle, and the next minute be speeding away with him, enjoying her drive all the more for the little disappointment that had preceded it.
What, then, was her chagrin to see a visitor handed out, and that visitor the woman for whom she had conceived the most violent antipathy! "Miss Deane, my dear," Edward said, with an entreating look at Zoe, which she did not see, her eyes being at that instant fixed upon the face of her uninvited and unwelcome guest.
"How do you do, my dear Mrs.Travilla?
I hope you are glad to see me ?" laughed the intruder, holding out a delicately gloved hand, "your husband has played the Good Samaritan to me to-night--saving me from having to stay in one of those wretched little hotels in the village till two o'clock to-morrow morning." "I am in usual health, thank you.