CHAPTER XX

The summer Sunday ran its usual course. Ward and his sister went to luncheon at the club; Madame Carter drove majestically to a late service in the pretty, vine-covered village church. Harriet, at last able to relax in soul and body, slept hour after glorious hour. Richard, returning from golf for a late luncheon, asked for her. Mrs. Carter was still asleep, Bottomley assured him, and received orders not to disturb her. But when Mr. Blondin called, Richard told the butler he was to be shown to the terrace at once.

At three o'clock, therefore, Royal Blondin followed his guide out to the basket chairs that were set under the trees, and here he found Richard, comfortably smoking, and alone. The host rose to greet him, but they did not shake hands, and measured each other like wrestlers as they sat down.

"I had your message," Royal said, as an opening.

"You've not seen Nina to-day?" Nina's father asked.

"I broke an engagement with her at the club," the other man assured him. "We will probably meet at the Bellamys', at dinner this evening."

"Ah, it was about that I wished to speak." Richard paused, and Blondin watched him with polite interest. "You have held your knowledge of Mrs. Carter as a sort of weapon for some months," Richard said. presently, "to use it when you saw fit. I have always been in my wife's confidence—"

He paused, but for no reason that Blondin could divine. As a matter of fact, it gave Richard a sudden and unexpected pleasure to speak of her so, to realize that he really might give the most wonderful title in the world to this beautiful and spirited woman.

"And I have also talked with Nina this morning," he went on. "I regret to say that her intentions have not altered."

"A loyal little heart!" Blondin said, gravely and contentedly. "I knew I could depend upon her!"

Richard looked at him steadily for a moment, and felt carefully for his next words.

"You know how I feel about her marrying you—" he began.

Royal nodded, regretfully, broke the ash from his cigarette with a delicately poised little finger, and regarded Richard questioningly. "That is my misfortune," he said, resignedly; pleasantly aware that Nina's father would never be his match in phrases and self-control.

"I needn't go over all that," Richard said. "I love my daughter; I believe she will make a fine woman. But she isn't anything but a child now!"

"Perhaps you fail to do her justice in that respect," Royal Blondin said. Richard flushed with anger, but felt helpless under the other man's quiet insolence.

"I said I wanted to see you on business, Mr. Blondin," Richard continued, trying to keep impatience and contempt out of his voice, "and we'll keep to business. I don't know what your circumstances are, of course—"

He hesitated, and Blondin looked at him with a faint interest.

"I live simply," he said. "Nina's money will be all her own."

"Nina will have no money, not one five-cent piece, for exactly three years!" Richard said.

Blondin shrugged.

"She is quite willing to try it!" he reminded her father.

"I know she is! But how about you?" Richard asked. "You are not a boy, you have some idea of what marriage means. For three years you must take care of her, dress her, amuse her, satisfy her that she has not made a mistake. Then she does come into her money— yes. But three years is a long time in which to keep her certain that the wisest thing she can do is turn it over to you."

He paused; Blondin smoked imperturbably.

"The marriage must be a notorious one, in any case," Richard pursued. "For I intend to make my stand too clear ever to permit of a retraction. I shall forbid it—let the world know that I forbid it. I shall forbid my daughter the house, and her wedding gift will be simply the clothes she happens to have. From Tuesday- -her eighteenth birthday—she will turn to you for her actual pocket money, for her theatre tickets and cab fares."

"I understand that perfectly!" Royal said, serenely. But underneath, while not moved from his intention, he felt his customary assurance shaken.

"She is extravagant, naturally," her father said. "She will want new gowns, want to display her new importance a little. Those bills will come to you, Mr. Blondin. All the world will know as well as you do that I have washed my hands of the whole affair."

Royal nodded again. He began to be conscious of a growing disquietude. He had naturally given much thought to this exact question during the past few weeks, and had solved it only by dismissing it. He had assured himself that with his only daughter no man as generous as Carter could be really harsh, and had always held his knowledge of Harriet comfortably in the back of his mind, as an irresistible lever. Now both these considerations were losing their force, and the empty satisfaction of defying Richard seemed to be losing its flavour, too.

Blondin had no money, and lived with an extravagance that kept him perpetually worried for money. The rent of his studio had been raised; he was conscious of the necessity of returning hospitalities, of buying clothes. His credit would receive an immediate assistance from a marriage with Richard Carter's daughter, to be sure, but to sustain a credit for three years upon that shadowy footing would be extremely trying.

He liked Nina; despite his contempt for the girl, there was a certain pitying affection for her stubborn loyalty and simplicity. But he knew exactly what hideous scenes must follow upon his marriage with her. What could he do with her, even suppose him to have borrowed money enough to make their honeymoon a success? He imagined her dawdling about his studio, imagined his social standing as necessarily affected, imagined Mr. and Mrs. Royal Blondin attempting to reach an agreement as to which invitations would be accepted and which rejected. Railway fares, luncheons downtown, all these cost money—lots of money. Nina would want to entertain "the girls." And Royal had at present several serious debts. He had lost money on three morning lectures, delightful lectures and well-attended, but still a financial loss. He had been foolish enough to lose money at bridge, at the Bellamys' a week ago, and young Bellamy was carrying his check for three hundred and twelve dollars, drawn upon a bank where Royal was already overdrawn. Then there was an unpleasantness about three rugs, rugs he had taken four years ago, in a moment of unbelievable prosperity, but for which seven hundred and twenty dollars had been promised, and never paid. Royal had indeed offered Hagopian the rugs and a bonus, back again; he was sick of the studio, and the endless reminders from his landlord's agent that the monthly one hundred and seventy-five dollars was overdue; he was sick of the whole business.

But Hagopian had refused to take back the rugs, and the rent had reached the four-figure mark, and until he had settled for the last lectures, he did not feel encouraged to begin more.

This was not a cheerful outlook with which to begin three years of penniless matrimony. Royal, suavely smiling, and smoking on the terrace, wondered suddenly if old Madame Carter, who had always been his champion, would help out.

But Richard seemed to read his thought.

"Nina has appealed to her grandmother," he said, "and I know my mother sympathizes, and would be glad to help you. But her affairs are in my hands. She preferred it so, when I offered her some securities years ago, and it has always been so. Her bank account receives a monthly check; she sends all her household bills to my secretary, Fox. He O. K's and pays them. Consequently, she is not able to act in this matter, and I think she is glad of it! I believe she would regret the—the inevitable estrangement as much as I."

Blondin elevated his eyebrows politely, as one interested but not concerned. But he knew, with a sort of rage, that he was beaten. His only recourse now would be to plead to Nina an all-important wire from the Pacific coast, a dying friend, a temporary absence. He could sub-let his studio for twice the rent, and live on the margin until kindly Fate, as always, turned up a new card. Nina would protest, would weep that her beloved studio, where her first exciting housekeeping was to begin, was occupied by strangers, but that was unavoidable. However, he would annoy this gray-eyed, firm-lipped business man first.

But Richard had taken a small slip of tan paper from his pocket, and was studying it thoughtfully. Royal saw it, and his eyes narrowed.

"Now, Mr. Blondin," Nina's father said, simply, "I'm a business man. I can't beat about the bush, and call things by pretty names. I want a favour of you, and I'm willing to pay for it. I telephoned you this morning that I wanted to see you on a matter of business. This is my proposition."

He leaned forward, and Royal saw the paper. He boasted to women of his indifference to money, it was true, but as with all adventurers, it held first place in his thoughts. No man who was in debt could look upon that check unmoved. Royal might win at cards to-night, to be sure; Carter might weaken to-morrow, it was true. But this check bore his name, and it was sure.

To enter the bank, with Richard Carter's check for so substantial an amount, to deposit it, exchange a careless word with the cashier, to write his check for the overdue rent, with a casual apology; to play bridge again, this evening, with young Bellamy, and this time win back that accursed check of his own, as he knew he would win it. ...

It all fluttered before his eyes, despite his attempt to look indifferent. It weighed down the little tarnished thing he called his pride, already half-forfeited in this group. His last attempt at bravado was obviously that, and he knew it.

"Just one moment, Mr. Carter. You say that you and I know what marriage is. How do you reconcile it with your knowledge of Nina, your knowledge of her upbringing, to plan deliberately what would make our marriage—or any marriage—foredoomed to failure from the start? I didn't spoil Nina, I didn't form her tastes. She has thought of herself as an heiress, she has spent money, lived luxuriously. I only ask a fair chance. Make it an allowance, if you like. Keep the matter in the family; don't blaze to the world that you disapprove! Many a less-promising marriage has turned out a brilliant success. She loves me. I—I am devoted to her. I see tremendous possibilities in her!"

"She loves you as a child does, and because she doesn't know you," Richard said, inflexibly. "But you haven't heard what I propose, Blondin. Hear me out. I give you this now, to-day, on condition that before to-night you talk to Nina. Represent anything you wish to her. Tell her what you please. But convince her that she must wait for two years—with no letters, no meetings, no engagement— that's all.

"On my part, I promise that nobody in the world, not Mrs. Carter, not anybody, will hear of this for two years from to-day, at least. Meanwhile, we'll amuse Nina. Her grandmother wants to take her to Santa Barbara next fall—Gardiner wants both the youngsters on his ranch this summer, or she may go with me to Brazil. She'll have enough to think about. We'll not hurt you with her, you may take my word for it. And I tell you frankly that I shall be deeply grateful. I'm not paying you for giving her up. I'm paying you for two years' delay. Young Hopper will be at the Gardiners' this summer—she likes him, and he likes her! Well, that's speculation." Richard dismissed it with a movement of his fine hands. "But we'll distract her!" he promised. "Hopper may buy a ranch out there—that sort of thing might suit Nina down to the ground!"

"Buy it with Nina's money," Royal could not help sneering.

Richard eyed him in surprise.

"When Joe Hopper died he left that boy's mother something in the millions," he said. "There's an immense estate." And then, with a reversion to business: "Come, now, Mr. Blondin. We understand each other. Nina's dining at the Bellamys' to-night; you're staying there. Will you see her?"

The check fluttered to the table between them. There was a long silence. Then Blondin ground out his cigarette in a stone saucer, rose, in all the easy beauty of his white summer clothes, his flowing scarf, his dark, romantic locks. He lifted his straw hat, put it on, picked up his stick, and laid it on the table. Then he took the check and read it thoughtfully.

"Thank you!" he said. Yet the shameful thing struck him, an adept now in evading and lying, as surprisingly easy, and as he sauntered away in the June warmth and silence, it was not of Nina, or her father, or even of himself that he was thinking.

He had met the widow of Joe Hopper a few nights ago: a faded little pleasant woman of fifty, pathetically grateful for his casual politeness in her strangeness and shyness. He had chanced, quite idly and accidentally, to make an impression on her. She had promised to come to the studio and look at his rugs.

Royal wondered why she dressed so badly; she needed simple materials and flowing lines. He heard himself telling her so.

Richard sat on, on the terrace, thinking, and presently his mother came out and joined him. Wasn't he, the old lady asked elaborately, going to the club? It was almost five o'clock, her son reminded her. Two or three of his business associates were coming to dinner; Hansen was to drive them all into the city later. Now, he just felt lazy.

"No tea to-day?" he asked, presently. People usually went to the club on Sunday, said his mother. She added, irrelevantly, that Harriet was asleep. Richard said that she had looked tired this morning; sleep was the best thing for her.

But suddenly life became significant and thrilling again; he heard her voice, her laugh. She came swiftly and quietly out to them, smiling at him, settling herself in the chair beside his mother. She wore white, transparent, simple; there were coral beads about her firm young throat. The dew of her deep sleep made her blue eyes wonderful; her cheeks were as pink as a baby's.

"Aren't the June days delicious?" she said. Richard studied her, smilingly, without answering. What would she say next, where would she move her eyes, or lay her white hand, he wondered. When she murmured to his mother in an undertone, he tried to catch the words.

"We're to have tea," Harriet announced. When it came, she poured it; for awhile the three were alone. Richard found himself talking to make her talk, but she was apparently interested only to draw out his mother and himself. "I'm starving," she presently said, apologetically, "this is luncheon and breakfast, too, for me!"

"Did you have a good sleep?" Richard asked. She flashed him an eloquent look.

"Oh—the most delightful of my whole life! Eight hours without stirring!"

The Hoyts arrived: a handsome mother and two equally handsome daughters. Harriet went to them gracefully; Richard saw that she was accepting good wishes. She took the callers to his mother, and filled their cups herself.

"She certainly is wonderful!" Richard said. He perfectly realized his own suddenly deepening feeling for her, but he dared not analyze it yet. When Mrs. Hoyt hinted at a dinner, he took part in the conversation. "Thursday? Why not, Harriet? We have no engagement for Thursday?"

She flushed brightly, signalling to him that she had already indicated an excuse. They had never dined together away from home. He need not think, said Harriet's anxious manner, that he need carry the appearance of marriage so far.

"But—but aren't Nina and I to be in town Thursday?" she ventured,

"Shopping. You can make that next week!" Richard said. He loved her confusion.

"Then we surely will! Thank you," she said to Mrs. Hoyt.

"Thursday, then, at eight!" the caller said, departing. Richard sauntered with them to their car, and returned to find Harriet half-scandalized, half-laughing.

"But do you want to dine with them?" she asked.

"Why not?" His smile challenged her, and she laughed hardily.

"I suppose there is no reason why not, Mr. Carter!"

"You can wear"—he gestured—"the black and goldy thing. They'll all be watching you!"

"Oh," she said, considering earnestly, "I have a much handsomer one than that. Blue and silver. You've not seen it."

"Blue and silver, then." Richard felt a distinct regret when the men he expected appeared. There was but one figure of any interest to him on the shady, flower-scented terrace, and that was a woman's figure in a white gown.

For two or three days he was conscious of a constant interest in her appearances and disappearances, a constant desire to please her. He found himself liking a certain young man, in his city club, for no other reason than that he had asked admiringly for Mrs. Carter. He found Harriet deeply interested in a book, and took the time to go into a bookstore and ask the clerk for something "on the same line as the Poulteney Letters." In Nina's old Kodak album, idly opened, he was suddenly held by pictures of Nina's governess, beautiful even in a bathing-suit, with dripping hair; lovely in the gipsy hats and short skirts of camp life.

Richard Carter was conscious of one mastering curiosity: he wanted to know just how Harriet regarded him. It seemed suddenly of supreme importance. He thought of it in his office, and smiled to himself during important business conferences, wondering about it. It seemed incredible to him, now, that his experiences of the past year had been so largely concerned with Harriet. His wife's companion, his daughter's governess, his own capable and dignified housekeeper, the woman he had so hastily married, all seemed a different person, a quite visionary person, with whom just such businesslike arrangements had been possible.

But Harriet was beginning to seem to him a stranger who possessed at once the most mysterious and childlike, the most beautiful and the most baffling personality that he had ever known. He made excuses to go home early, just to catch glimpses of this wife who was not his wife. That he had ever taken a fatherly, advisory tone with this woman was unbelievable; her mere approach made him catch his breath and lose his coherency. He had walked into her room—he had patronized her—he had asked her as casually to marry him as if she had been fifty, and as plain as she was lovely!

Richard shuddered as he thought of it. He made constant efforts to engage her in personalities, but she evaded him. There was a real thrill for him in the quiet dinner at the Hoyts'. Mrs. Carter, said slow old bewhiskered John Hoyt, was an extremely pretty woman. My wife—Richard in answering called her that—looks particularly well in an evening gown. Indeed she looked exquisite in the blue and silver dress, laughing—still with that adorable mist of strangeness and shyness about her—with her neighbours at the table, and afterward in the drawing room, waving her silver fan slowly while Freda Hoyt, who quite obviously adored her, whispered her long confidences.

Coming home in the limousine they had neighbours with them, old Doctor and Mrs. Carmichael, so he might not have the word alone with her for which he had been longing all evening. But he stopped her in the wide, dim hallway when they reached Crownlands.

"Tired?" he said, at the foot of the stairs.

"Not a bit!" There was an enchanting vitality about her. She had slipped the thin wrap from her shoulders, and she turned to him her lovely, happy face. "Did you want me?"

"I wanted to say something to you," Richard said, feeling awkward as a boy.

"In there?" She nodded, suddenly alert, toward the library.

"Why in there?" he asked, with a little husky laugh. His one impulse was to put his arms about her.

"I thought—bills, perhaps?" Harriet said, innocently. It was the third day of the month; he had often consulted her as to expenses before this.

"No," Richard said, with another unsteady little laugh. "It wasn't bills. I was just wondering—if I had been very stupid," he said, taking one of her hands, and looking up from the fingers that lay in his to the face that now wore an expression a little frightened despite the smile.

"Never with me!" Harriet said, in a low tone.

"Never so blind," Richard said, "never so matter-of-fact that I hurt your feelings? Nothing of—that sort?"

"Always the kindest friend I ever had!" the girl answered, unsteadily, and with suddenly wet eyes. "The—the most generous!"

He looked at her hand again, looked up at her as if he would speak. But instead she felt her fingers pressed, and felt her heart thump with a delicious terror.

"Do—do you like the blue and silver dress?" she asked with an excited laugh.

"I like it better than any dress I have ever seen!" Richard answered, seriously. Her hand free now, Harriet, standing on the lowest step, made him a little bow that displayed the frail silver fan, the silver slippers, the stockings with their silver lace.

"And wait until you see our frocks for the boat!" she warned him. "Nina has a yellow coat—and I have a black lace and a white embroidery! Really—REALLY I have never seen anything like the white one. SHEER, you know—"

Bottomley came noiselessly, discreetly, across the hall. Instantly the woman in blue and silver was all the mistress.

"Is Mr. Ward in, Bottomley?"

"He dined at 'ome, Mrs. Carter."

"Oh, thank you! You may lock up, then. Good-night, Mr. Carter! Good-night, Bottomley!"

She was gone. The blue and silver gown and the bunched folds of the furred coat vanished on the stairway landing. The tall clock that she passed struck eleven. And Richard, going into his library, realized that he was deeply and passionately in love. He could think of nothing else—he did not wish to think of anything else. Her face came between him and his book, her voice loitered in his ears, her precise, pretty phrasing, the laughter that sometimes lurked beneath her tones.

He went upstairs, and to his own suite. There was a door between his own sitting room and the room that had been Isabelle's. From the other side of his door, to-night, came the murmur of voices: Harriet and Nina were talking. Their conversation seemed full of fascination to Richard, although he could not hear a word, and would not have made an effort to do so. But he liked the thought of this lovely woman near his little girl, of their conferences and confidences.

Next day Harriet told him that Nina had been talking of young Hopper.

"It seems that this awkward, tongue-tied youth is desperately enamoured of Rosa Artures, of the Metropolitan Opera Company," Harriet said in rich amusement. "Of course the Artures is forty- five, and has a domestic life that is the delight of the women's magazines. But poor little Hopper haunts her performances, and sends her orchids, just the same. He had never met her until a week or two ago, then some friends had her and her husband on their yacht, and he was there. And she ate, it seems, and laughed, and even drank a little too much—he's entirely disillusioned! Isn't it too bad? And somebody told me about it, so I encouraged Nina to get him to talk last night. They talked only too well! They exchanged tragedies."

"Well, that won't hurt her!" Richard said, thoughtfully.

"Hurt her!" Harriet answered, eagerly. "It will be the best thing in the world for her!"

They were at the country club; Harriet chaperoning Nina, who was down at the tennis court with a group of young persons; Richard breathless and happy from a hard game of eighteen holes. He had encountered her on the porch, on his way to the showers, experiencing, as he did so, the thrill that belongs only to the unexpected encounter. Now they loitered at the railing, in the shade of the green awnings, as entirely oblivious of watching eyes as if the clubhouse were the library at home.

"Nina is charming as a confidante," Harriet said, "and she would make a boy of that type a delightful wife. She is the sort that marries early, or not at all. and I'm going deliberately to encourage this affair in a quiet way. He's a dear fellow, domestic and shy; they'd love their home and their children and Nina would develop into the ideal wife and mother. She's discriminating, she makes nice friends, she has splendid French and Spanish. She looks lovely to-day; I persuaded her to leave her glasses at home, even if she did miss them a little, and she has on one of the gowns we bought for the Brazilian trip."

"I made the reservations to-day. We sail the third of August," Richard said. "We've got to have your pictures taken for the passports."

"South America!" Harriet gave a great sigh of joy. "You don't know how excited I am!" she said. "Three weeks on a big liner—and we have to have bathing-suits, somebody said for the canvas tank, and they have all sorts of things on board. I've always wanted to go to Rio!"

"There are eight big staterooms with baths on this liner," Richard said. "I've taken two adjoining ones, so we ought to be very comfortable. Yes," he conceded, enjoying her enthusiasm, "it ought to be a great trip! Will you and Nina want a maid?"

"A maid?" She widened her blue eyes. "Oh, no! Why should we?"

Richard laughed at her surprise.

"You might take Pilgrim," he suggested. And with an amused glance he added: "You forget that you are a rich man's wife."

"Indeed I don't!" Harriet said, quickly. "I spend simply scandalous sums! When I saw my sister last week," she confided, gaily, "she explained that the payment on the new house would prevent the usual six weeks at the beach this year, and I simply made them go! I paid the rent on their cottage and bought the tickets, and—oh, all sorts of things, little dresses and sandals and shade hats, and off they went! You never saw such joy!"

Richard blinked his eyes, and managed a smile.

"What did you pay it out of?" he wondered,

"My bank account! Linda and I shopped a whole morning, and had lunch downtown—it was more fun!" Harriet said, youthfully. "The rent," she explained, "was eighty dollars—"

"What? For six weeks!" Richard interrupted.

"Do you think that's a lot?" she asked, anxiously.

"Go on!" he said. "They all went off, did they? Eighty dollars gives them a cottage until the middle of August, does it?"

"Until school opens," she nodded. "All the other things—well, it came to about two hundred."

"That's happiness, isn't it?" Richard said. "A cottage on a swarming beach. Sons and daughters in bathing-suits, no real housekeeping for the mother, nothing but sleep and swimming and plain meals!"

"They love it!" But Harriet's eyes drank in the awninged shade of the country club porches, the flowered cretonne on the wicker chairs, the women in their exquisite gowns, the smooth curves of the green links, where brightly clad figures went to and fro. Riders were disappearing into the green shade of the bridle paths; girls in white, demanding tea, came up the shallow steps. A group of four women, at a card table, broke up with laughter. "Yes, it's honester than this," she said, bringing her eyes back to his. "I'll have Linda and the girls here some day," she added, "and they'll think it is wonderful. But after all, they get more taste out of life!"

"You know they do!" Richard said.

"Mrs. Carter," said a woman in bright yellow, coming up to them suddenly, "will you be a darling and come and talk to my French officer? The girls have all been practising their Berlitz on him, and he's almost losing his mind! Dick," added this matron, who had linked her arm about Harriet's waist, "for heaven's sake go clean up! Can't you find time to talk to your wife at home? I've been watching you for five minutes, getting my arms burned simply black—will you come, Mrs. Carter? That's the poor soul, over there with Sarah. I don't know why I've had a French governess for that girl for seven years!"

"To save the life of a fellow creature—" Harriet said in her liquid French. She went off, laughingly, in the other woman's custody; Richard looked after them a moment.

He saw them join the group of smiling girls and the harassed Frenchman; saw the alien's face brighten as Harriet was introduced. A moment later a boy with a tennis racket dashed up to them, and there was a scattering in the direction of the courts. The girls surrounded the boy, and streamed away chattering. The matron in yellow came back to her card table. And Harriet, unfurling her parasol, deep in conversation with the captured soldier, sauntered slowly after the tennis players. The afternoon sunshine sent clean shadows across the clipped grass; the stretched blue silk of Harriet's parasol threw a mellow orange light upon her tawny hair and saffron-coloured gown.

Richard had a child's desperate wish that he was dressed, and might run after them.

"They are playing the semi-finals," he said to himself, hurrying through his change of garments. "I wish to the Lord I had gotten through in time to get down there!"

But it was not at the tennis that he looked, twenty minutes later, when he reached the courts; although a brilliant play was being made, and there was a spattering of applause. His eyes instantly found Harriet's figure; she was still talking to the Frenchman, whose olive face was glowing with interest and admiration, and not more than eight inches, Richard thought, from her own. Harriet's own face wore the shadow of a smile, her lashes were dropped, and she was gently pushing the point of her closed parasol into the green turf. The chairs in which they sat had been slightly turned from the court.

Richard engaged himself in conversation with two or three men and women who were watching the youngsters' game, and presently found himself applauding his son for a brilliant ace. But after perhaps five minutes he walked quite without volition, straight to Harriet's neighbourhood, and she rose at once, introduced her new friend, and with a glance at her wrist, announced that she must go.

"Ward said he would drive me home the instant it was over," said Harriet, clapping heartily for the triumphant finish of the set.

"I'll drive you home!" Richard said, instantly. "I've the small car."

"Friday night!" Harriet smiled. For Friday night was the night for a men's dinner and poker game at the country club, and Richard usually liked to be there.

"I can come back!" he persisted, suddenly caring more for this concession than anything else in the world. Without another word she agreed, bade her Frenchman what seemed to Richard a voluble good-bye, and when the bowing officer disappeared turned with a reminiscent smile.

"And now what?"

"Where did you learn to chatter French that way?" Richard said, leading the way to the line of parked motors.

"Oh, we lived in Paris—old Mrs. Rogers and I," Harriet reminded him carelessly. And reaching the little rise of ground that lay between the clubhouse and the parking field, she stood still, looking off across the exquisite spread of fields and valleys, banded by great strips of woods, and flooded now by the streaming shadows and golden lights of the late afternoon. "What a day!" she said, filling her lungs with great breaths of the sweet air. "What an hour!"

"What I meant to say to you up there on the porch," Richard said, "when that—that woman interrupted—"

Harriet herself interrupted with a laugh.

"You say 'that woman' as if it was a bitter, deadly curse!" she said.

"Well—" They had reached the car now, and Richard was investigating the oil gauge and spark plugs under the hood. "Well, a woman like that breaks in—nothing to her!" he said with scorn, straightening up.

"Yes, but at a country club?" Harriet offered, placatingly, as she got into the front seat, and tucked the pongee robe snugly about the saffron-coloured gown.

"I suppose so!" He got in beside her; there was a moment of backing and wrenching before they glided out smoothly on the white driveway. "What I meant to say was this," he added, suddenly, with a sidewise glance from his wheel. "I—I want you to realize that I appreciate the injustice—the crudeness of my rushing to you in New Jersey that Christmas Day. I realize that we all have imposed on you—we've taken you too much for granted! I was in trouble, and I couldn't think of any other way out of it. But for any man to put a proposition like that to any woman—"

They were driving very slowly. He looked at her again, and met a wondering look in her beautiful eyes that still further confused him. He had been uncomfortably conscious of an odd confusion in touching upon this subject at all. Yet his mind had been full of it all day.

"I never felt it so, I assure you!" Harriet said with her lucid, friendly look. Richard felt that there was more to say, but realized that he had selected an unfortunate time for these confidences.

"I'm afraid I've been extremely stupid in the matter," he said, feeling for his words. "I've gone about it clumsily. To tell you the truth—What does that boy want?"

It was Ward who was coming toward them across the green, with great springs and leaps, like some mountain animal.

"Give us a lift!" shrieked Ward, flinging himself upon the car as its speed decreased. "Something is the matter with my engine— engina pectoris is what I call it! Father, Mr. Tom Grant expects you to dine at his table to-night, he said to remind you. And, Harriet, angel of angels, we will be about six or seven about the groaning board; is that all right?"

"I told Bottomley six or seven," Harriet said, serenely. "Ward, get in or get out," she added, maternally, "don't hang over the door in that blood-curdling way!"

She had put her arm about the boy to steady him; they began to discuss tennis scores with enthusiasm. Richard drove the rest of the way home almost without speaking.

He planned to see Harriet again that evening, and left the club at eleven o'clock, after an incredibly dull game, with the definite hope that the youngsters would dance, or in some other way prolong the summer evening at least until midnight. His heart sank when he reached Crownlands; the lower floor showed only the tempered lights that burned until the latest member of the family came in, and Bottomley reported that the young persons had gone upstairs at about half-past ten, sir. It was now half-past eleven.

Richard debated sending Harriet a message to the effect that he would like to see her for a moment. The flaw in this plan was that he could think of nothing about which there was the slightest necessity of seeing her. He felt restless and anything but sleepy, and glanced irresolutely at the library door, and at the stairway.

Suddenly uproar broke out upstairs: there were thumping feet, shrieks, wild laughter, and slamming doors. With a suddenly lightened heart Richard ran up the wide, square flight to the landing. His son, in pajamas that were more or less visible beneath his streaming robe of Oriental silk, was pirouetting about the upper hall with a siphon of soda water. Subdued giggles and smothered gasps indicated that the young ladies were somewhere near, in hiding. Young Hopper, under Ward's direction, was investigating doors and alcoves.

"Amy Hawkes—Amy Hawkes—Amy Hawkes—come into court!" Ward intoned. "Drunk and disorderly!"

"Here, here, here!" Richard said. "What's all this?" Amy and Nina, with hysteric shrieks, immediately forsook cover, and dashed down to him, clinging to him wildly.

"Oh, Father! Make them stop! Oh, Mr. Carter, save us!" screamed the girls in delicious terror. "Oh, they got poor Francesca—she's locked up in your room! They climbed up our porch, after they swore to Harriet that they wouldn't make another SOUND—"

Harriet now appeared in the hallway, her hair falling in a braid over her shoulder, and the long lines of the black robe she wore giving her figure an unusual effect of height. She did not see Richard immediately, for she had eyes only for Ward, as she caught his shoulder, and took away the siphon.

"Now, Ward—look here," she said, sternly. "What sort of honour do you call this! Half an hour ago I thought all this nonsense was STOPPED. Shame on you! Those girls promised me—"

She saw Richard, and laughed, the colour flooding her face.

"Aren't they simply shameless!" she said. "I had them all settled down, once! Nina, where's Francesca? You see," Harriet said, in rapid explanation to Richard, "I gave the girls my room to-night, so that they could all be together, and this is my reward!"

The girls, entirely unalarmed by her severity, had deserted Richard now, and were clinging to her with weak laughter and feeble explanations.

"Francesca unlocked that door, and rushed into Mr. Carter's room!" Amy explained, wiping her eyes. "And then the boys locked her in there!"

The composed reappearance of Francesca at this point, however, added to the general hilarity.

"You DID NOT lock me in, Smarties!" Francesca drawled, childishly. "They climbed to the balcony, and we were—well, we were undressing," she said to Richard, "and here they were hammering and yelling like—like Siwashes! We grabbed our wrappers, we wanted to—-"

"We wanted to lock them out there!" Amy explained, laughing uncontrollably. "But—"

"And I snapped off the light—" Nina interposed, with deep satisfaction.

"And, mind you—"

"And, Father—"

"And the wonder was that we didn't die of fright—"

"Now, look here," Harriet said, in the babel, "I'll give you all exactly two minutes to QUIET DOWN. Never in the course of my life- -"

Richard thought her maternal indulgence delightful; he thought the young people who clung about her charming in their apologetic and laughing promises. Ward and Bruce Hopper mounted to their own region; Richard went with the girls and Harriet to the rooms that had been attacked. Pilgrim, the tireless, was already there, replacing pillows, straightening beds, untwisting curtains. The girls, with reminiscent bubbles of laughter, began to help her.

After the last good-nights, Richard and Harriet had no choice but to cross the hall again, and they stood there for a moment, laughing at the recent excitement.

"After twelve," Harriet said, with a smiling shake of her head. "Aren't they young demons! However," she added in an undertone, "it's the best thing in the world for Nina! This sort of nonsense will blow cobwebs away!"

Richard was only conscious of a desire to prolong this intimate little moment of parental consultation.

"She doesn't speak of Blondin?" he asked.

"Not at all. The birthday came and went placidly enough," Harriet answered, suddenly intent after her laughing. And as he did not speak for a second, she looked up at him, innocently. "You don't think she's hiding anything?" she asked, anxiously.

"I—no, I hardly think so," Richard answered, confusedly. Their eyes met, and he smiled vaguely. Then Harriet slowly crossed the hall to the door of the guest room where she was spending the night, and gave him an only half-audible good-night. Richard stood watching the door for a moment or two after it had closed upon the slender, dimly seen figure. Then he went to his own rooms, and began briskly enough to move about between the mirrors and dressing room, windows and bed. But two or three times he stopped short, and found himself staring vacantly into space, all movement arrested, even thought arrested for whole long minutes at a time.

Harriet, entering her room, closed the door noiselessly, and remained for a long time standing with her hands resting against it behind her, her eyes alert, her breath coming as if she had been running. There was only a night light in the bedroom; the covers were still tumbled back from her sudden flight toward the rioting youngsters in the hall. She got back into her bed, and opened her book. But for a long time she neither slept nor read; her eyes widened at the faintest sound of the summer night; her heart thumped madly when the curtains whispered at the window, or the wicker chairs gave the faintest creak. It had not been only for Richard that the midnight hour of responsibility and informality shared had had its thrill.

One o'clock. Harriet closed her book and snapped off her light. But first she went to the window, and leaned out into the sweet darkness. There was shadow unbroken everywhere; no light in all the big house was burning as late as her own.



CHAPTER XXI

After that life took on a mysterious fragrance and beauty that made every hour of it an intoxication to the master and mistress of Crownlands. The fact that their secret was all their own was all the more enchanting. To the domestic staff, to the children, to the outside world, life went upon its usual smooth way. Mr. Carter would be in town to-night, Mr. Carter was detained at the office, Mrs. Carter was chaperoning the young people, there were flowers for Mrs. Carter. That was all Bottomley and Pilgrim and Ward and Nina saw.

But to Harriet and Richard the delicious, secret game of hide-and- go-seek made everything else in the world insignificant. Harriet opened the boxes of flowers he sent her with a heart suffocating with joy. Richard consented to be absent from the dinner table over which she presided with an agony of renunciation that almost made him feel ill. When he chanced one day to meet her with Nina, in a breezy, awninged summer restaurant, the sight of the slender figure thrilled him as he had never been thrilled by any woman he had ever known. He was to speak to her, to hear her voice! One day he bought her shoes; in the shop she looked at him for approval. He thought the shoes, low shoes with buckles, that showed the silk-clad ankle, very suitable and pretty. He was thrown into sudden confusion when the shoe clerk turned to him with a murmured mention of the price.

Ten dollars? Richard fumbled for his purse. He had met her walking alone in the Avenue; she had said that she must get shoes. Hundreds of other men were presumably buying their wives shoes, up and down the brilliant street. But Richard found the adventure shaking to the soul.

"They're lovely shoes," Harriet said, as they walked out into the sunshine. She told him that she was to meet Nina at his mother's at five. Richard, with sudden eagerness, wondered if she would spend the interval in having tea somewhere, but instead they went into a bookshop, and she carried a new book triumphantly away. "It's a frightful day in town," Harriet said, "and if we're a little early we may all get away to the country that much sooner!"

She established herself contentedly beside him when they did finally start for Crownlands. Ward, beside Hansen, did most of the talking; Nina was silent, and Harriet noticed that she was very pale. Richard was repeating to himself one phrase all the way; a phrase that he found so thrilling and absorbing that it was enough to keep him from speaking aloud, or listening to what the others said.

"I love her—I love her—I love her!" thought Richard. And sometimes he glanced sidewise at her, her beautiful hair rippling in thick waves under the thin veil, her face a little pale from the heat of the day, her glorious eyes faintly shadowed. When the swift movement of the car brought her shoulder against his, their eyes met for a smiling second, and it seemed to Richard that his heart brimmed with the most delicious emotion that he had ever known.

Nina complained of a headache when they reached home, and went early to bed. Harriet, when she had tubbed and changed to an evening gown, glanced in at Nina, and thought the girl asleep. There were men guests for dinner, and afterward there was bridge. Harriet sat with Madame Carter for awhile, for the old lady had also dined upstairs, went about the house upon her usual errands, and, going to her own room, found Nina reading, at about ten o'clock. Nina did not look up or speak as Harriet came in.

The door that led to Richard's room was not only unlocked, but actually ajar. Harriet gave it a surprised glance, and spoke to Nina, in the next room.

"Nina, did you unlock this door?"

"What door?" Nina called. "Oh, yes!" she added. "I did."

"Oh," Harriet murmured. And she stepped to the door, and looked into Richard's room.

It was a sort of upstairs sitting room, furnished simply, in man fashion, with deep leather chairs on each side of the fireplace, broad tables carrying only the essential lamps and ashtrays, a shabby desk where Richard kept personal papers, and bookshelves crammed with novels. Harriet, making a timid round, saw Balzac and Dickens, Dumas and Fielding, several Shakespeares and a complete Meredith, jostling elbows with modern novels in bright jackets, and yellow French romances losing their paper covers.

With a great sense of adventure she looked down from the unfamiliar windows at a new perspective of driveway and garden, peeped into the big square bedroom beyond. Two large photographs of Nina and Ward and an oil painting of his mother were here; there had been several pictures of Isabelle once, Harriet knew, but these had long ago disappeared.

Suddenly her heart turned to water; some tiny sound in the silence warning her that someone had entered. She turned, discovered here in the very centre of his own private apartment. He was standing not three feet away from her. For a second they stared at each other with a sort of mutual trepidation.

"Hello!" he said; then matter-of-factly, "I brought home a paper to-night; I wanted Unger to see it! I left it in the suit I wore."

He stepped to the dressing room, and groped in a pocket, without moving his pleasant look from her.

"Giving my room the once over?" he said.

"Nina left the door open. I've never been in here before," Harriet said, trying to make her voice as natural as his own. Confused and ashamed, she was hardly conscious of what she said.

"Here we are!" Richard glanced at the paper he had found. "See here," he said, presently, going to a window, "come here a minute, I want to show you this! You see," they were both looking out into the moonlight now, "you see, this is where I propose to build on that big room downstairs, throw the library into the blue room, and have a big sleeping porch upstairs here," he explained. "Perfectly feasible, and yet it will make a different house of it!"

Harriet commented interestedly enough. But she heard his voice rather than his words, and saw only the well-groomed, black-clad figure, the shining patent-leather shoes, the fine hand that indicated the changes.

Perhaps he was conscious of confusion, too, for his words stopped, and presently they were looking at each other in a strange silence, Richard still smiling, Harriet wide eyed.

Then suddenly his strong arms held her close, and her blue, frightened eyes were close to his, and she felt everything else in the world slip away from her except the exquisite knowledge that she loved this man with all her heart and soul.

"I want to tell you something," Richard said, quickly and incoherently. "I want you to know that I love you—I think I've always loved you! This wasn't in our bond, I know, but I think I couldn't have wanted you so without loving you! If—if the time comes, Harriet, when you can care for me, you'll tell me, won't you? That's all I want, just to know that you will tell me. You're going to tell me, yourself! I'm going to make you love me! I'll be patient—I'll not hurry you—but some day you'll have to tell me that I've—I've won you!"

He had spoken swiftly, almost sternly, with a sort of desperate determination. Now he freed her arms as suddenly as he had grasped them, and added, in a lower tone:

"Until that time I'll not—not even—kiss the top of your hair, Harriet," he said.

In the mad rushing of her senses she could not find the right word, but she detained him with an entreating hand. Her eyes, shining with a look that he had never seen there before, were fixed on his. But Richard did not look at her eyes, he looked down at the hand she had laid on his own.

"I don't think," Harriet said, breathlessly, "that I can ever like you any more than I do!"

She had meant it for surrender; her heart was beating wildly with the glorious shame of a proud woman who gives herself. But Richard was not looking at the betraying eyes. In the great new love that had swept him from all his old moorings there was a deep humility. He only heard her say that she could never learn to love him. He bent his head over her finger tips, and kissed them, as he said quietly:

"But I'm going to try to make you, just the same!"

Then he was gone, and Harriet was standing alone in the softly lighted room. For a few moments she remained perfectly still, with her white hands pressed to her burning cheeks. Then, shaken with joy and surprise, with a delicious terror and something of a child's innocent chagrin, she went noiselessly back to her own room, closed the communicating door, and undressed with pauses for the dreams that would come creeping over body and soul, and hold her in their exquisite stillness for long minutes together.

She was brushing her hair when Nina suddenly appeared, and came lifelessly in to sit on the edge of Harriet's bed. "I want to ask you something!" Nina said, in an odd voice. "And, Harriet, I want you to tell me the truth!"

Harriet, turning, faced her between two curtains of rippling gold. She saw a new Nina, a subdued, thoughtful, serious woman in the old confident Nina's place.

"But first I ought to tell you that I wasn't with Amy to-day!" Nina said.

"Oh, Nina! Must we begin that sort of thing?" Harriet reproached her. But she was puzzled by Nina's manner. "Back to school-girl tricks!" she said.

"Never back to a school-girl," Nina said, with trembling lips. "No," she added, passionately, "I'll never be that again. Harriet," she went on, "I've written Royal three times, since my birthday, and I've seen him twice."

"You saw him to-day?" Harriet ventured.

"I went there this afternoon," Nina admitted, heavily. Then suddenly, "Harriet, did my father pay him—did he take money—to break our engagement?"

"Nina, what a horrible thought! Of course not!" Harriet could fortunately answer in perfect honesty.

"Oh, Harriet," the girl caught her hands, turning sick and imploring eyes toward her, "are you sure?"

"Nina, dear, your father would have told me!"

"He might not—he might not!" Nina said, feverishly. "But if he did——!" she whispered, half to herself. "That's Pilgrim, I rang for her," she said, of a knock on her own door. "Ask my father to come up, will you?" she said to the maid, when Pilgrim appeared. "We'll settle it now!"

"Mr. Carter is just coming up," Pilgrim said. And a moment later Richard, with an interested face, came through Nina's room, and joined them. Harriet had had time only to knot her hair back carelessly, and slip into the most formal of her big Chinese coats.

"Father," Nina said, when they three were alone together, "did Royal Blondin take a check from you ten days ago?"

Richard, taken unaware, glanced sharply at Harriet, who shook her head, with an anxious look. He sat down beside Nina on the bed, and put a fatherly arm about her.

"Ah, Father, DON'T put me off!" the girl begged. "I wrote him, after my birthday," she said, "and told him that money made no difference to me. He didn't answer. Then I got Bruce Hopper to ask his mother to have Blondin meet her at the club for tea, and I saw him then. Bruce," Nina cast in, still in the new, self-contained tone, "has been wonderful about it! I know he only seems a silent sort of boy, but I'll never forget what he's done for me! Royal," she resumed, "didn't want to see me, and said he had promised Father that it was OVER. He—but I needn't tell you all he said. It sounded——" Nina clung to her father's hands, and shut her eyes. "It sounded so—so false!" she whispered, bitterly. "So I went to his studio to-day!" she presently continued. "And—there were two or three women there, but it wasn't that. They were— well, perhaps they were just having fun. But——" And Nina looked pitifully from Harriet's sympathetic face to her father's troubled eyes. "But I've not been having much fun!" she faltered, with a suddenly trembling mouth. "I've been planning—PRAYING!—that somehow it would come out right. He told me to-day that he had promised not to see or speak to me for two years," she said, slowly. "I—Father, I KNEW that he had a reason! He was changed. I never saw him so! And two hours ago," she pointed to the door that led into her father's room, "two hours ago I went in there," she said, "and I looked over your own check book. Father, did you write him a check? Was that the stub that had 'R.B.' on it?"

Richard looked at her sorrowfully.

"I'm sorry, Nina," he said, simply. "I told him you should not know, from me! I would have spared you that."

For a few minutes there was silence in the room. Then Nina said bravely, through tears:

"I don't know why you should be sorry for what will save me months of slow worry, all at one blow! You and Harriet needn't worry any more. I'm cured. I've been a fool, I let him flatter me and lie to me," said this new Nina, with bitter courage, "but I'm over it now. I'm sorry I gave you so much trouble, Father——"

"My darling girl," her father said, tenderly. "I only wish I could spare you all this!"

"Better now than two or three years after we were married," Nina said. "Plenty of girls find it out then! Father, I want you to get that check, through the clearing-house, for me," she said, heroically, "and I want to keep it. If ever I'm a fool about a man again, I'll take it out and look at it!"

"I have it, I told Fox to get it to-day," Richard said. "You shall have it!"

Nina had turned suddenly white; it was as if a last little hope had been killed.

"You have it!" she whispered. "He cashed it, then!"

"He cashed it the next morning," Richard said. Nina was silent for a moment.

"How you must laugh at me, Harriet!" she said then.

"I? Laugh at you!" Harriet said, stricken. "My darling girl, I am the last woman in the world who could do that! I was only your age, Nina, when I met him—you know that story. Why, Nina, you're but eighteen, after all, you'll have many and many an affair before the right man comes along," Harriet said. "You'll look back on this some day, and say, 'It was an experience, and I learned from it! It is only going to make me happier and more sure when the man whom I really love comes to me!' Aren't you much richer now, in actual knowledge of men, than Amy and Francesca, who haven't had anything but school flirtations?"

Nina, sitting between Richard and Harriet on the bed, looked wistfully from one face to another.

"I'll try to make it so, Harriet!" she said. And somewhat timidly she added, "Father—and Harriet—shall you feel dreadfully if I say that I don't want to go to Brazil? I'll tell you why. Ward is going out to the Gardiner ranch, and Bruce is going, too, and it seems to me that riding and camping and living in the open air will be—well, will seem better to me than just being on the steamer! I dread seeing strange places and meeting people," said Nina. "The Gardiner girls were simply darling to me the term they were in school, and—don't you remember, Harriet?—we were the only people who took them out for Christmas and Easter holidays, and they like me! And—if you wouldn't be too disappointed, Harriet, I believe I would like it better!"

"My darling girl," Harriet said, warmly, "you must do what seems right to you. But you won't need me?" she added, tactfully.

"Well, you see Mrs. Gardiner and Mrs. Hopper are sisters," Nina explained, readily, "and they'll be with us. But if you'd LIKE to come—we are going camping in the most glorious canon that you ever saw!" Nina interrupted herself with sudden enthusiasm. "And I am so glad I really can ride! I'd feel so horribly if I couldn't!"

"I think you'll have a wonderful two months of it," Harriet said, "and then Granny'll be coming West, to spend the winter in Santa Barbara, and that will be delightful, too! And now, Nina love, it's after eleven o'clock," she ended with a change of tone, "and you have had a terrible day! We will have to do some more shopping to-morrow afternoon, and try on the riding habits, and do a thousand things. And, Nina," Richard heard her add tenderly, when his daughter had given him a rather sober good-night kiss at the door of her room, "whenever you feel sad and depressed about it, just remember to say to yourself, 'This won't last! In a few months the sting will all be gone!'"

"Nina is in safe hands!" Richard said to himself, thankfully, as he closed the door. He carried a memory of Harriet's earnest eyes, her low, eager voice, her encouraging arm about Nina's shoulders.

They were all at breakfast when he came down the next morning. His mother, in one of the lacy, flowing robes she always wore before noon, laid down a letter half-read, to smile at him. Ward, his dark head very sleek above his informal summer costume, was deep in talk with Bruce Hopper, who had evidently ridden over from the country club, and was in a well-fitting, shabby jersey that became his somewhat lanky frame. Nina, somewhat silent, but interested in everything, wore an expression of quiet self- possession that her father found touching. Nina was growing up, he thought.

Completing the group, and officiating at the foot of the table, was the radiant Harriet. She looked as fresh as one of the creamy rosebuds that were massed in the dull blue bowl before her, her shining hair framing the dusky forehead like dull gold wings, the frail sleeves of her blue gown falling back from her rounded arm.

"You're late, my son," said Madame Carter, as he kissed her temple.

"Never mind," Harriet said, serenely, "I've just this instant come, and he saves my face! Do turn that toast, Ward!" she added. And to the maid, "Mr. Carter's fruit, Mollie, please."

Breakfast was the least formal of all the informal meals at Crownlands. Bottomley was never in evidence until the late luncheon; mail and newspapers, and the morning gaiety of the young people all made for cheerful disorder.

"If you're going into town at ten, Father, we'll go, too," Nina suggested. "But I can't," she was heard to murmur in an undertone to the disappointed Bruce. "I have to get CLOTHES, don't I?"

"Oh, Brazil—Brazil—Brazil!" the youth said, disgustedly. "I hate the sound of it!"

"THESE clothes are for the ranch," Nina said, smiling. Both her father and Harriet augured well from the youth's instantly transformed face.

"Say—honestly?" he asked, ineloquently, with an irrepressible grin.

"I think so," Nina murmured. The rest of their conversation was inaudible; they presently wandered forth to finish it on the tennis court. Ward followed his grandmother upstairs, and Harriet and Richard were left to finish their breakfast alone.

"You look tired," Harriet said, rising, when his omelette came in, and pausing beside the head of the table for an instant on her way to the pantry.

"I had a bad night," Richard admitted. "But that's not all you're going to have for breakfast?" he protested.

"I never have more!" Harriet smiled. "I'm sorry about the bad night," said she.

"I couldn't help thinking——" Richard began.

"What is it, Mollie?" he added, harshly, to the hovering maid.

"Nothing—no matter—sir," Mollie stammered, retreating. "It was just that the man about the sheep came, sir——" she faltered.

"The sheep!" Richard echoed, frowning. Harriet laughed gaily.

"Oh, yes!" she said. "I told you I had ordered two or three young sheep," she explained, "to keep our lawns cropped. They look so adorable, and they do it so nicely! Has he got them, Mollie?" she added, eagerly. "Oh, I must see them! I'll be back in exactly five minutes, Mr. Carter," she said.

"What are we supposed to do with them in winter?" Richard asked, smiling.

"Oh, they will have a little—a little byre!" she answered, readily. "You'll—you'll like them!" And he heard her joyous voice following Mollie away.

Richard pushed back his plate, and looked irresolutely after her. Then suddenly he rose, and walked through the pantry, asking two startled maids for Mrs. Carter. Etelka had been several years in the house without ever seeing "him" in this neighbourhood before.

Richard crossed a sunshiny brick-walled yard, where linen was drying, and went through a brick gateway that gave on a neglected little lane. The lane had once been the driveway for a carriage and a prancing pair, but there were only riding horses at Crownlands now, and three of these were looking over the wall at the grass-grown road. And Richard found Harriet here.

She was on her knees, in the pleasant green shadow of the old sycamores and maples, her back was toward him, she was looking up into the face of the old stableman, Trotter, who stood before her, his crooked, dwarfed old figure still further bent, as he held two strong young ewes by their thick, woolly shoulders.

As Trotter gave him a respectful good morning, Harriet sprang to her feet, and whirled about, and Richard saw the woodeny stiff legs of a very young lamb dangling from her arms, and the lamb's meek little black-rubber face close to the beautiful face he loved.

"Oh, Richard!" she said, carried away by her own delight. "Look at it! Isn't it the sweetest darling baby that ever was! Oh, you sweet!" she said, putting her lips to the little woolly head.

"You are!" Richard said quite without premeditation.

Harriet laughed, surrendered the little lamb to Trotter, and followed the old man's departure to the stables with an anxious warning.

"They're to have this little enclosure all to themselves," she explained to Richard, when they were alone. "He's going to build them a little shed." And as Richard, his back leaning against the low brick wall, made no immediate attempt to move, she looked at him expectantly. "Shall we go back?" she suggested.

"That sounded very pleasant to me," Richard said, with deliberate irrelevance.

Harriet looked at him in puzzled silence.

"I mean your calling me Richard," he said.

She flushed brightly, and laughed.

"Did I? I always think of you as Richard!" she explained.

"So you abandon me on the Brazil trip?" he asked, watching her seriously.

"Well——?" Harriet shrugged. "I thought you had to go," she added. "I'm—I'll confess I'm disappointed. But to have Nina want to do anything is such a relief to me that I'm only going to think of that!"

"Yes, I have to go," Richard said, slowly. "I must be there for a month at least. But I'm disappointed, too. I got thinking of it, in the night—I couldn't sleep! I'm disappointed, too." He fell silent. "I wish," he said, hesitatingly, "that you had not told me that you—you don't feel that you—are going to love me!" he said. "I love you with all my heart and soul. It—well, it's all I think of, now. I want——" He turned, and picking an ivy leaf from the wall, looked at it intently for a moment, and tore it apart before he let it fall. "However," he said, philosophically, smiling at her, "we'll let that wait!"

Harriet, close to him, laid one hand upon his shoulder.

"You misunderstood me," she said, steadily. "What I said was that I could not love you more than I do! Aren't you—ever—going to understand?"

For a long minute they looked straight into each other's eyes.

"Harriet, do you mean it?" Richard said then, simply.

"Yes," she answered, "I mean it! I've always meant it. I've always loved you, I think. No man could want any woman to love him more!"

The blue eyes so near his own were misty with sudden tears. In the deserted little lane, in the blue summer morning and the green shade of the sycamores, they were alone. Richard put his arms about her.

And for a moment he held all the beauty and fragrance and laughter and tears that was Harriet close to his heart; the soft hair tumbled, the brown, firm young hand resting on his shoulder, the warm cheek against his own.

A breeze rustled through the branches high above them; the blue river, beyond the brick wall, flowed on in an even sheet of satin; two birds looped the enclosure in a sudden twittering flight; and from the stable region came the plaintive bleating of a mother sheep. But to Harriet and Richard the world was all their own.

"My wife!" said Richard Carter.

THE END