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+The Project Gutenberg Ebook A Modern Chronicle, v2, by Winston Churchill
+WC#38 in our series by Winston Churchill (USA author, not Sir Winston)
+
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+Title: A Modern Chronicle, Volume 2.
+
+Author: Winston Churchill (USA author, not Sir Winston Churchill)
+
+Release Date: March, 2004  [EBook #5375]
+[Yes, we are more than one year ahead of schedule]
+[This file was first posted on June 28, 2002]
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+Edition: 10
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+Language: English
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+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MODERN CHRONICLE, V2, BY CHURCHILL ***
+
+
+
+This eBook was produced by David Widger <widger@cecomet.net>
+
+
+
+[NOTE: There is a short list of bookmarks, or pointers, at the end of the
+file for those who may wish to sample the author's ideas before making an
+entire meal of them.  D.W.]
+
+
+
+
+
+A MODERN CHRONICLE
+
+By Winston Churchill
+
+
+
+BOOK I.
+
+Volume 2.
+
+
+VII.      THE OLYMPIAN ORDER
+VIII.     A CHAPTER OF CONQUESTS
+IX.       IN WHICH THE VICOMTE CONTINUES HIS STUDIES
+X.        IN WHICH HONORA WIDENS HER HORIZON
+XI.       WHAT MIGHT HAVE BEEN
+XII.      WHICH CONTAINS A SURPRISE FOR MRS. HOLT
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+THE OLYMPIAN ORDER
+
+Lying back in the chair of the Pullman and gazing over the wide Hudson
+shining in the afternoon sun, Honora's imagination ran riot until the
+seeming possibilities of life became infinite.  At every click of the
+rails she was drawing nearer to that great world of which she had
+dreamed, a world of country houses inhabited by an Olympian order.  To be
+sure, Susan, who sat reading in the chair behind her, was but a humble
+representative of that order--but Providence sometimes makes use of such
+instruments.  The picture of the tall and brilliant Ethel Wing standing
+behind the brass rail of the platform of the car was continually
+recurring to Honora as emblematic: of Ethel, in a blue tailor-made gown
+trimmed with buff braid, and which fitted her slender figure with
+military exactness.  Her hair, the colour of the yellowest of gold, in
+the manner of its finish seemed somehow to give the impression of that
+metal; and the militant effect of the costume had been heightened by a
+small colonial cocked hat.  If the truth be told, Honora had secretly
+idealized Miss Wing, and had found her insouciance, frankness, and
+tendency to ridicule delightful.  Militant--that was indeed Ethel's note
+--militant and positive.
+
+"You're not going home with Susan!" she had exclaimed, making a little
+face when Honora had told her.  "They say that Silverdale is as slow as
+a nunnery--and you're on your knees all the time.  You ought to have come
+to Newport with me."
+
+It was characteristic of Miss Wing that she seemed to have taken no
+account of the fact that she had neglected to issue this alluring
+invitation.  Life at Silverdale slow!  How could it be slow amidst such
+beauty and magnificence?
+
+The train was stopping at a new little station on which hung the legend,
+in gold letters, "Sutton."  The sun was well on his journey towards the
+western hills.  Susan had touched her on the shoulder.
+
+"Here we are, Honora," she said, and added, with an unusual tremor in her
+voice, "at last!"
+
+On the far side of the platform a yellow, two-seated wagon was waiting,
+and away they drove through the village, with its old houses and its
+sleepy streets and its orchards, and its ancient tavern dating from
+stage-coach days.  Just outside of it, on the tree-dotted slope of a long
+hill, was a modern brick building, exceedingly practical in appearance,
+surrounded by spacious grounds enclosed in a paling fence.  That, Susan
+said, was the Sutton Home.
+
+"Your mother's charity?"
+
+A light came into the girl's eyes.
+
+"So you have heard of it?  Yes, it is the, thing that interests mother
+more than anything else in the world."
+
+"Oh," said Honora, "I hope she will let me go through it."
+
+"I'm sure she will want to take you there to-morrow," answered Susan, and
+she smiled.
+
+The road wound upwards, by the valley of a brook, through the hills, now
+wooded, now spread with pastures that shone golden green in the evening
+light, the herds gathering at the gate-bars.  Presently they came to a
+gothic-looking stone building, with a mediaeval bridge thrown across the
+stream in front of it, and massive gates flung open.  As they passed,
+Honora had a glimpse of a blue driveway under the arch of the forest.  An
+elderly woman looked out at them through the open half of a leaded
+lattice.
+
+"That's the Chamberlin estate," Susan volunteered.  "Mr. Chamberlin has
+built a castle on the top of that hill."
+
+Honora caught her breath.
+
+"Are many of the places here like that?"  she asked.  Susan laughed.
+
+"Some people don't think the place is very--appropriate," she contented
+herself with replying.
+
+A little later, as they climbed higher, other houses could be discerned
+dotted about the country-side, nearly all of them varied expressions of
+the passion for a new architecture which seemed to possess the rich.
+Most of them were in conspicuous positions, and surrounded by wide acres.
+Each, to Honora, was an inspiration.
+
+"I had no idea there were so many people here," she said.
+
+"I'm afraid Sutton is becoming fashionable," answered Susan.
+
+"And don't you want it to?" asked Honora.
+
+"It was very nice before," said Susan, quietly.
+
+Honora was silent.  They turned in between two simple stone pillars that
+divided a low wall, overhung from the inside by shrubbery growing under
+the forest.  Susan seized her friend's hand and pressed it.
+
+"I'm always so glad to get back here," she whispered.  "I hope you'll
+like it."
+
+Honora returned the pressure.
+
+The grey road forked, and forked again.  Suddenly the forest came to an
+end in a sort of premeditated tangle of wild garden, and across a wide
+lawn the great house loomed against the western sky.  Its architecture
+was of the '60's and '70's, with a wide porte-cochere that sheltered the
+high entrance doors.  These were both flung open, a butler and two
+footmen were standing impassively beside them, and a neat maid within.
+Honora climbed the steps as in a dream, followed Susan through a hall
+with a black-walnut, fretted staircase, and where she caught a glimpse of
+two huge Chinese vases, to a porch on the other side of the house spread
+with wicker chairs and tables.  Out of a group of people at the farther
+end of this porch arose an elderly lady, who came forward and clasped
+Susan in her arms.
+
+"And is this Honora?  How do you do, my dear?  I had the pleasure of
+knowing you when you were much younger."
+
+Honora, too, was gathered to that ample bosom.  Released, she beheld a
+lady in a mauve satin gown, at the throat of which a cameo brooch was
+fastened.  Mrs. Holt's face left no room for conjecture as to the
+character of its possessor.  Her hair, of a silvering blend, parted in
+the middle, fitted tightly to her head.  She wore earrings.  In short,
+her appearance was in every way suggestive of momentum, of a force which
+the wise would respect.
+
+"Where are you, Joshua?" she said.  "This is the baby we brought from
+Nice.  Come and tell me whether you would recognize her."
+
+Mr. Holt released his--daughter.  He had a mild blue eye, white mutton-
+chop whiskers, and very thin hands, and his tweed suit was decidedly the
+worse for wear.
+
+"I can't say that I should, Elvira," he replied; "although it is not hard
+to believe that such a beautiful baby should, prove to be such a--er--
+good-looking young woman."
+
+"I've always felt very grateful to you for bringing me back," said
+Honora.
+
+"Tut, tut, child," said Mrs. Holt; "there was no one else to do it.  And
+be careful how you pay young women compliments, Joshua.  They grow vain
+enough.  By the way, my dear, what ever became of your maternal
+grandfather, old Mr. Allison--wasn't that his name?"
+
+"He died when I was very young," replied Honora.
+
+"He was too fond of the good things of this life," said Mrs. Holt.
+
+"My dear Elvira!" her husband protested.
+
+"I can't help it, he was," retorted that lady.  "I am a judge of human
+nature, and I was relieved, I can tell you, my dear" (to Honora), "when
+I saw your uncle and aunt on the wharf that morning.  I knew that I had
+confided you to good hands."
+
+"They have done everything for me, Mrs. Holt," said Honora.
+
+The good lady patted her approvingly on the shoulder.
+
+"I'm sure of it, my dear," she said.  "And I am glad to see you
+appreciate it.  And now you must renew your acquaintance with the
+family."
+
+A sister and a brother, Honora had already learned from Susan, had died
+since she had crossed the ocean with them.  Robert and Joshua, Junior,
+remained.  Both were heavyset, with rather stern faces, both had close-
+cropped, tan-coloured mustaches and wide jaws, with blue eyes like
+Susan's.  Both were, with women at least, what the French would call
+difficult--Robert less so than Joshua.  They greeted Honora reservedly
+and--she could not help feeling--a little suspiciously.  And their
+appearance was something of a shock to her; they did not, somehow, "go
+with the house," and they dressed even more carelessly than Peter Erwin.
+This was particularly true of Joshua, whose low, turned-down collar
+revealed a porous, brick-red, and extremely virile neck, and whose
+clothes were creased at the knees and across the back.
+
+As for their wives, Mrs. Joshua was a merry, brown-eyed little lady
+already inclining to stoutness, and Honora felt at home with her at once.
+Mrs. Robert was tall and thin, with an olive face and dark eyes which
+gave the impression of an uncomfortable penetration.  She was dressed
+simply in a shirtwaist and a dark skirt, but Honora thought her striking
+looking.
+
+The grandchildren, playing on and off the porch, seemed legion, and they
+were besieging Susan.  In reality there were seven of them, of all sizes
+and sexes, from the third Joshua with a tennis-bat to the youngest who
+was weeping at being sent to bed, and holding on to her Aunt Susan with
+desperation.  When Honora had greeted them all, and kissed some of them,
+she was informed that there were two more upstairs, safely tucked away in
+cribs.
+
+"I'm sure you love children, don't you?"  said Mrs. Joshua.  She spoke
+impulsively, and yet with a kind of childlike shyness.
+
+"I adore them," exclaimed Honora.
+
+A trellised arbour (which some years later would have been called a
+pergola) led from the porch up the hill to an old-fashioned summer-house
+on the crest.  And thither, presently, Susan led Honora for a view of the
+distant western hills silhouetted in black against a flaming western sky,
+before escorting her to her room.  The vastness of the house, the width
+of the staircase, and the size of the second-story hall impressed our
+heroine.
+
+"I'll send a maid to you later, dear," Susan said.  "If you care to lie
+down for half an hour, no one will disturb you.  And I hope you will be
+comfortable."
+
+Comfortable!  When the door had closed, Honora glanced around her and
+sighed, "comfort" seemed such a strangely inadequate word.  She was
+reminded of the illustrations she had seen of English country houses.
+The bed alone would almost have filled her little room at home.  On the
+farther side, in an alcove, was a huge dressing-table; a fire was laid in
+the grate of the marble mantel, the curtains in the bay window were
+tightly drawn, and near by was a lounge with a reading-light.  A huge
+mahogany wardrobe occupied one corner; in another stood a pier glass, and
+in another, near the lounge, was a small bookcase filled with books.
+Honora looked over them curiously.  "Robert Elsmere" and a life of
+Christ, "Mr. Isaacs," a book of sermons by an eminent clergyman,
+"Innocents Abroad," Hare's "Walks in Rome," "When a Man's Single," by
+Barrie, a book of meditations, and "Organized Charities for Women."
+
+Adjoining the bedroom was a bathroom in proportion, evidently all her
+own,--with a huge porcelain tub and a table set with toilet bottles
+containing liquids of various colours.
+
+Dreamily, Honora slipped on the new dressing-gown Aunt Mary had made for
+her, and took a book out of the bookcase.  It was the volume of sermons.
+But she could not read: she was forever looking about the room, and
+thinking of the family she had met downstairs.  Of course, when one lived
+in a house like this, one could afford to dress and act as one liked.
+She was aroused from her reflections by the soft but penetrating notes of
+a Japanese gong, followed by a gentle knock on the door and the entrance
+of an elderly maid, who informed her it was time to dress for dinner.
+
+"If you'll excuse me, Miss," said that hitherto silent individual when
+the operation was completed, "you do look lovely."
+
+Honora, secretly, was of that opinion too as she surveyed herself in the
+long glass.  The simple summer silk, of a deep and glowing pink, rivalled
+the colour in her cheeks, and contrasted with the dark and shining masses
+of her hair; and on her neck glistened a little pendant of her mother's
+jewels, which Aunt Mary, with Cousin Eleanor's assistance, had had set in
+New York.  Honora's figure was that of a woman of five and twenty: her
+neck was a slender column, her head well set, and the look of race, which
+had been hers since childhood, was at nineteen more accentuated.  All
+this she saw, and went down the stairs in a kind of exultation.  And when
+on the threshold of the drawing-room she paused, the conversation
+suddenly ceased.  Mr. Holt and his sons got up somewhat precipitately,
+and Mrs. Holt came forward to meet her.
+
+"I hope you weren't waiting for me," said Honora, timidly.
+
+"No indeed, my dear," said Mrs. Holt.  Tucking Honora's hand under her
+arm, she led the way majestically to the dining-room, a large apartment
+with a dimly lighted conservatory at the farther end, presided over by
+the decorous butler and his assistants.  A huge chandelier with prisms
+hung over the flowers at the centre of the table, which sparkled with
+glass and silver, while dishes of vermilion and yellow fruits relieved
+the whiteness of the cloth.  Honora found herself beside Mr. Holt, who
+looked more shrivelled than ever in his evening clothes.  And she was
+about to address him when, with a movement as though to forestall her,
+he leaned forward convulsively and began a mumbling grace.
+
+The dinner itself was more like a ceremony than a meal, and as it
+proceeded, Honora found it increasingly difficult to rid herself of a
+curious feeling of being on probation.
+
+Joshua, who sat on her other side and ate prodigiously, scarcely
+addressed a word to her; but she gathered from his remarks to his father
+and brother that he was interested in cows.  And Mr. Holt was almost
+exclusively occupied in slowly masticating the special dishes which the
+butler impressively laid before him.  He asked her a few questions about
+Miss Turner's school, but it was not until she had admired the mass of
+peonies in the centre of the table that his eyes brightened, and he
+smiled.
+
+"You like flowers?" he asked.
+
+"I love them," slid Honora.
+
+"I am the gardener here," he said.  "You must see my garden, Miss
+Leffingwell.  I am in it by half-past six every morning, rain or shine."
+
+Honora looked up, and surprised Mrs. Robert's eyes fixed on her with the
+same strange expression she had noticed on her arrival.  And for some
+senseless reason, she flushed.
+
+The conversation was chiefly carried on by kindly little Mrs. Joshua and
+by Mrs. Holt, who seemed at once to preside and to dominate.  She praised
+Honora's gown, but left a lingering impression that she thought her
+overdressed, without definitely saying so.  And she made innumerable--and
+often embarrassing--inquiries about Honora's aunt and uncle, and her life
+in St. Louis, and her friends there, and how she had happened to go to
+Sutcliffe to school.  Sometimes Honora blushed, but she answered them all
+good-naturedly.  And when at length the meal had marched sedately down to
+the fruit, Mrs. Holt rose and drew Honora out of the dining room.
+
+"It is a little hard on you, my dear," she said, "to give you so much
+family on your arrival.  But there are some other people coming to-
+morrow, when it will be gayer, I hope, for you and Susan."
+
+"It is so good of you and Susan to want me, Mrs. Holt," replied Honora,
+"I am enjoying it so much.  I have never been in a big country house like
+this, and I am glad there is no one else here.  I have heard my aunt
+speak of you so often, and tell how kind you were to take charge of me,
+that I have always hoped to know you sometime or other.  And it seems the
+strangest of coincidences that I should have roomed with Susan at
+Sutcliffe."
+
+"Susan has grown very fond of you," said Mrs. Holt, graciously.  "We are
+very glad to have you, my dear, and I must own that I had a curiosity to
+see you again.  Your aunt struck me as a good and sensible woman, and it
+was a positive relief to know that you were to be confided to her care."
+Mrs. Holt, however, shook her head and regarded Honora, and her next
+remark might have been taken as a clew to her thoughts.  "But we are not
+very gay at Silverdale, Honora."
+
+Honora's quick intuition detected the implication of a frivolity which
+even her sensible aunt had not been able to eradicate.
+
+"Oh, Mrs. Holt," she cried, "I shall be so happy here, just seeing things
+and being among you.  And I am so interested in the little bit I have
+seen already.  I caught a glimpse of your girls' home on my way from the
+station.  I hope you will take me there."
+
+Mrs. Holt gave her a quick look, but beheld in Honora's clear eyes only
+eagerness and ingenuousness.
+
+The change in the elderly lady's own expression, and incidentally in the
+atmosphere which enveloped her, was remarkable.
+
+"Would you really like to go, my dear?"
+
+"Oh, yes indeed," cried Honora.  "You see, I have heard so much of it,
+and I should like to write my aunt about it.  She is interested in the
+work you are doing, and she has kept a magazine with an article in it,
+and a picture of the institution."
+
+"Dear me!" exclaimed the lady, now visibly pleased.  "It is a very modest
+little work, my dear.  I had no idea that--out in St. Louis--that the
+beams of my little candle had carried so far.  Indeed you shall see it,
+Honora.  We will go down the first thing in the morning."
+
+Mrs. Robert, who had been sitting on the other side of the room, rose
+abruptly and came towards them.  There was something very like a smile on
+her face,--although it wasn't really a smile--as she bent over and kissed
+her mother-in-law on the cheek.
+
+"I am glad to hear you are interested in--charities, Miss Leffingwell,"
+she said.
+
+Honora's face grew warm.
+
+"I have not so far had very much to do with them, I am afraid," she
+answered.
+
+"How should she?"  demanded Mrs. Holt.  "Gwendolen, you're not going up
+already?"
+
+"I have some letters to write," said Mrs. Robert.
+
+"Gwen has helped me immeasurably," said Mrs. Holt, looking after the tall
+figure of her daughter-in-law, "but she has a curious, reserved
+character.  You have to know her, my dear.  She is not at all like Susan,
+for instance."
+
+Honora awoke the next morning to a melody, and lay for some minutes in
+a delicious semi-consciousness, wondering where she was.  Presently she
+discovered that the notes were those of a bird on a tree immediately
+outside of her window--a tree of wonderful perfection, the lower branches
+of which swept the ground.  Other symmetrical trees, of many varieties,
+dotted a velvet lawn, which formed a great natural terrace above the
+forested valley of Silver Brook.  On the grass, dew-drenched cobwebs
+gleamed in the early sun, and the breeze that stirred the curtains was
+charged with the damp, fresh odours of the morning.  Voices caught her
+ear, and two figures appeared in the distance.  One she recognized as Mr.
+Holt, and the other was evidently a gardener.  The gilt clock on the
+mantel pointed to a quarter of seven.
+
+It is far too late in this history to pretend that Honora was,
+by preference, an early riser, and therefore it must have been the
+excitement caused by her surroundings that made her bathe and dress
+with alacrity that morning.  A housemaid was dusting the stairs as she
+descended into the empty hall.  She crossed the lawn, took a path through
+the trees that bordered it, and came suddenly upon an old-fashioned
+garden in all the freshness of its early morning colour.  In one of the
+winding paths she stopped with a little exclamation.  Mr. Holt rose from
+his knees in front of her, where he had been digging industriously with a
+trowel.  His greeting, when contrasted with his comparative taciturnity
+at dinner the night before, was almost effusive--and a little pathetic.
+
+"My dear young lady," he exclaimed, "up so early?  "He held up
+forbiddingly a mould-covered palm.  "I can't shake hands with you."
+
+Honora laughed.
+
+"I couldn't resist the temptation to see your garden," she said.
+
+A gentle light gleamed in his blue eyes, and he paused before a trellis
+of June roses.  With his gardening knife he cut three of them, and held
+them gallantly against her white gown.  Her sensitive colour responded as
+she thanked him, and she pinned them deftly at her waist.
+
+"You like gardens?" he said.
+
+"I was brought up with them," she answered; "I mean," she corrected
+herself swiftly, "in a very modest way.  My uncle is passionately fond of
+flowers, and he makes our little yard bloom with them all summer.  But of
+course," Honora added, "I've never seen anything like this."
+
+"It has been a life work," answered Mr. Holt, proudly, "and yet I feel as
+though I had not yet begun.  Come, I will show you the peonies--they are
+at their best--before I go in and make myself respectable for breakfast."
+
+Ten minutes later, as they approached the house in amicable and even
+lively conversation, they beheld Susan and Mrs. Robert standing on the
+steps under the porte-cochere, watching them.
+
+"Why, Honora," cried Susan, "how energetic you are!  I actually had a
+shock when I went to your room and found you'd gone.  I'll have to write
+Miss Turner."
+
+"Don't," pleaded Honora; "you see, I had every inducement to get up."
+
+"She has been well occupied," put in Mr. Holt.  "She has been admiring my
+garden."
+
+"Indeed I have," said Honora.
+
+"Oh, then, you have won father's heart!" cried Susan.  Gwendolen Holt
+smiled.  Her eyes were fixed upon the roses in Honora's belt.
+
+"Good morning, Miss Leffingwell," she said, simply.
+
+Mr. Holt having removed the loam from his hands, the whole family,
+excepting Joshua, Junior, and including an indefinite number of children,
+and Carroll, the dignified butler, and Martha, the elderly maid, trooped
+into the library for prayers.  Mr. Holt sat down before a teak-wood table
+at the end of the room, on which reposed a great, morocco-covered Bible.
+Adjusting his spectacles, he read, in a mild but impressive voice, a
+chapter of Matthew, while Mrs. Joshua tried to quiet her youngest.
+Honora sat staring at a figure on the carpet, uncomfortably aware that
+Mrs. Robert was still studying her.  Mr. Holt closed the Bible
+reverently, and announced a prayer, whereupon the family knelt upon the
+floor and leaned their elbows on the seats of their chairs.  Honora did
+likewise, wondering at the facility with which Mr. Holt worded his
+appeal, and at the number of things he found to pray for.  Her knees had
+begun to ache before he had finished.
+
+At breakfast such a cheerful spirit prevailed that Honora began almost
+to feel at home.  Even Robert indulged occasionally in raillery.
+
+"Where in the world is Josh?" asked Mrs. Holt, after they were seated.
+
+"I forgot to tell you, mother," little Mrs. Joshua chirped up, "that he
+got up at an unearthly hour, and went over to Grafton to look at a cow."
+
+"A cow!" sighed Mrs: Holt.  "Oh, dear, I might have known it.  You must
+understand, Honora, that every member of the Holt family has a hobby.
+Joshua's is Jerseys."
+
+"I'm sure I should adore them if I lived in the country," Honora
+declared.
+
+"If you and Joshua would only take that Sylvester farm, and build a
+house, Annie," said Mr. Holt, munching the dried bread which was
+specially prepared for him, "I should be completely happy.  Then,"
+he added, turning to Honora, "I should have both my sons settled on
+the place.  Robert and Gwen are sensible in building."
+
+"It's cheaper to live with you, granddad," laughed Mrs. Joshua.  "Josh
+says if we do that, he has more money to buy cows."
+
+At this moment a footman entered, and presented Mrs. Holt with some mail
+on a silver tray.
+
+"The Vicomte de Toqueville is coming this afternoon, Joshua," she
+announced, reading rapidly from a sheet on which was visible a large
+crown.  "He landed in New York last week, and writes to know if I could
+have him."
+
+"Another of mother's menagerie," remarked Robert.
+
+"I don't think that's nice of you, Robert," said his mother.  "The
+Vicomte was very kind to your father and me in Paris, and invited us to
+his chateau in Provence."
+
+Robert was sceptical.
+
+"Are you sure he had one?" he insisted.
+
+Even Mr. Holt laughed.
+
+"Robert," said his mother, "I wish Gwen could induce you to travel more.
+Perhaps you would learn that all foreigners aren't fortune-hunters."
+
+I've had an opportunity to observe the ones who come over here, mother."
+
+"I won't have a prospective guest discussed," Mrs. Holt declared, with
+finality.  "Joshua, you remember my telling you last spring that Martha
+Spence's son called on me?" she asked.  "He is in business with a man
+named Dallam, I believe, and making a great deal of money for a young
+man.  He is just a year younger than you, Robert."
+
+"Do you mean that fat, tow-headed boy that used to come up here and eat
+melons and ride my pony?" inquired Robert.  "Howard Spence?"
+
+Mrs. Holt smiled.
+
+"He isn't fat any longer, Robert.  Indeed, he's quite good-looking.
+Since his mother died, I had lost trace of him.  But I found a photograph
+of hers when I was clearing up my desk some months ago, and sent it to
+him, and he came to thank me.  I forgot to tell you that I invited him
+for a fortnight any time he chose, and he has just written to ask if he
+may come now.  I regret to say that he's on the Stock Exchange--but I was
+very fond of his mother.  It doesn't seem to me quite a legitimate
+business."
+
+"Why!" exclaimed little Mrs. Joshua, unexpectedly, "I'm given to
+understand that the Stock Exchange is quite aristocratic in these days."
+
+"I'm afraid I am old-fashioned, my dear," said Mrs. Holt, rising.  "It
+has always seemed to me little better than a gambling place.  Honora, if
+you still wish to go to the Girls' Home, I have ordered the carriage in a
+quarter of an hour."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+A CHAPTER OF CONQUESTS
+
+Honora's interest in the Institution was so lively, and she asked so many
+questions and praised so highly the work with which the indiscreet young
+women were occupied that Mrs. Holt patted her hand as they drove
+homeward.
+
+"My dear," she said, "I begin to wish I'd adopted you myself.  Perhaps,
+later on, we can find a husband for you, and you will marry and settle
+down near us here at Silverdale, and then you can help me with the work."
+
+"Oh, Mrs. Holt," she replied, "I should so like to help you, I mean.  And
+it would be wonderful to live in such a place.  And as for marriage, it
+seems such a long way off that somehow I never think of it."
+
+"Naturally," ejaculated Mrs. Holt, with approval, "a young girl of your
+age should not.  But, my dear, I am afraid you are destined to have many
+admirers.  If you had not been so well brought up, and were not naturally
+so sensible, I should fear for you."
+
+"Oh, Mrs. Holt!" exclaimed Honora, deprecatingly, and blushing very
+prettily.
+
+"Whatever else I am," said Mrs. Holt, vigorously, "I am not a flatterer.
+I am telling you something for your own good--which you probably know
+already."
+
+Honora was discreetly silent.  She thought of the proud and unsusceptible
+George Hanbury, whom she had cast down from the tower of his sophomore
+dignity with such apparent ease; and of certain gentlemen at home, young
+and middle-aged, who had behaved foolishly during the Christmas holidays.
+
+At lunch both the Roberts and the Joshuas were away.
+
+Afterwards, they romped with the children--she and Susan.  They were shy
+at first, especially the third Joshua, but Honora captivated him by
+playing two sets of tennis in the broiling sun, at the end of which
+exercise he regarded her with a new-born admiration in his eyes.  He was
+thirteen.
+
+"I didn't think you were that kind at all," he said.
+
+"What kind did you think I was?"  asked Honora, passing her arm around
+his shoulder as they walked towards the house.
+
+The boy grew scarlet.
+
+"Oh, I didn't think you--you could play tennis," he stammered.
+
+Honora stopped, and seized his chin and tilted his face upward.
+
+"Now, Joshua," she said, "look at me and say that over again."
+
+"Well," he replied desperately, "I thought you wouldn't want to get all
+mussed up and hot."
+
+"That's better," said Honora.  "You thought I was vain, didn't you?"
+
+"But I don't think so any more," he avowed passionately.  "I think you're
+a trump.  And we'll play again to-morrow, won't we?"
+
+"We'll play any day you like," she declared.
+
+It is unfair to suppose that the arrival of a real vicomte and of a
+young, good-looking, and successful member of the New York Stock Exchange
+were responsible for Honora's appearance, an hour later, in the
+embroidered linen gown which Cousin Eleanor had given her that spring.
+Tea was already in progress on the porch, and if a hush in the
+conversation and the scraping of chairs is any sign of a sensation, this
+happened when our heroine appeared in the doorway.  And Mrs. Holt, in the
+act of lifting the hot-water kettle; put it down again.  Whether or not
+there was approval in the lady's delft-blue eye, Honora could not have
+said.  The Vicomte, with the graceful facility of his race, had
+differentiated himself from the group and stood before her.  As soon
+as the words of introduction were pronounced, he made a bow that was
+a tribute in itself, exaggerated in its respect.
+
+"It is a pleasure, Mademoiselle," he murmured, but his eyes were more
+eloquent.
+
+A description of him in his own language leaped into Honora's mind, so
+much did he appear to have walked out of one of the many yellow-backed
+novels she had read.  He was not tall, but beautifully made, and his coat
+was quite absurdly cut in at the waist; his mustache was en-croc, and its
+points resembled those of the Spanish bayonets in the conservatory: he
+might have been three and thirty, and he was what the novels described as
+'un peu fane' which means that he had seen the world: his eyes were
+extraordinarily bright, black, and impenetrable.
+
+A greater contrast to the Vicomte than Mr. Howard Spence would have been
+difficult to find.  He was Honora's first glimpse of Finance, of the
+powers that travelled in private cars and despatched ships across the
+ocean.  And in our modern mythology, he might have stood for the god of
+Prosperity.  Prosperity is pink, and so was Mr. Spence, in two places,--
+his smooth-shaven cheeks and his shirt.  His flesh had a certain
+firmness, but he was not stout; he was merely well fed, as Prosperity
+should be.  His features were comparatively regular, his mustache a light
+brown, his eyes hazel.  The fact that he came from that mysterious
+metropolis, the heart of which is Wall Street, not only excused but
+legitimized the pink shirt and the neatly knotted green tie, the pepper-
+and-salt check suit that was loose and at the same time well-fitting, and
+the jewelled ring on his plump little finger.  On the whole, Mr. Spence
+was not only prepossessing, but he contrived to give Honora, as she shook
+his hand, the impression of being brought a step nearer to the national
+source of power.  Unlike the Vicomte, he did not appear to have been
+instantly and mortally wounded upon her arrival on the scene, but his
+greeting was flattering, and he remained by her side instead of returning
+to that of Mrs. Robert.
+
+"When did you come up?" he asked.  Only yesterday," answered Honora.
+
+"New York," said Mr. Spence, producing a gold cigarette case on which his
+monogram was largely and somewhat elaborately engraved, "New York is
+played out this time of year--isn't it?  I dropped in at Sherry's last
+night for dinner, and there weren't thirty people there."
+
+Honora had heard of Sherry's as a restaurant where one dined fabulously,
+and she tried to imagine the cosmopolitan and blissful existence which
+permitted "dropping in at" such a place.  Moreover, Mr. Spence was
+plainly under the impression that she too "came up" from New York, and it
+was impossible not to be a little pleased.
+
+"It must be a relief to get into the country," she ventured.
+
+Mr. Spence glanced around him expressively, and then looked at her with a
+slight smile.  The action and the smile--to which she could not refrain
+from responding--seemed to establish a tacit understanding between them.
+It was natural that he should look upon Silverdale as a slow place, and
+there was something delicious in his taking, for granted that she shared
+this opinion.  She wondered a little wickedly what he would say when he
+knew the truth about her, and this was the birth of a resolution that his
+interest should not flag.
+
+"Oh, I can stand the country when it is properly inhabited," he said, and
+their eyes met in laughter.
+
+"How many inhabitants do you require?" she asked.
+
+"Well," he said brazenly, "the right kind of inhabitant is worth a
+thousand of the wrong kind.  It is a good rule in business, when you come
+across a gilt-edged security, to make a specialty of it."
+
+Honora found the compliment somewhat singular.  But she was prepared to
+forgive New York a few sins in the matter of commercial slang: New York,
+which evidently dressed as it liked, and talked as it liked.  But not
+knowing any more of a gilt-edged security than that it was something to
+Mr. Spence's taste, a retort was out of the question.  Then, as though
+she were doomed that day to complicity, her eyes chanced to encounter an
+appealing glance from the Vicomte, who was searching with the courage of
+despair for an English word, which his hostess awaited in stoical
+silence.  He was trying to give his impressions of Silverdale, in
+comparison to country places abroad, while Mrs. Robert regarded him
+enigmatically, and Susan sympathetically.  Honora had an almost
+irresistible desire to laugh.
+
+"Ah, Madame," he cried, still looking at Honora, "will you have the
+kindness to permit me to walk about ever so little?"
+
+"Certainly, Vicomte, and I will go with you.  Get my parasol, Susan.
+Perhaps you would like to come, too, Howard," she added to Mr. Spence;
+"it has been so long since you were here, and we have made many changes."
+
+"And you, Mademoiselle," said the Vicomte to Honora, you will come--yes?
+You are interested in landscape?"
+
+"I love the country," said Honora.
+
+"It is a pleasure to have a guest who is so appreciative," said Mrs.
+Holt.  "Miss Leffingwell was up at seven this morning, and in the garden
+with my husband."
+
+"At seven!" exclaimed the Vicomte; "you American young ladies are
+wonderful.  For example--" and he was about to approach her to enlarge on
+this congenial theme when Susan arrived with the parasol, which Mrs. Holt
+put in his hands.
+
+"We'll begin, I think, with the view from the summer house," she said.
+"And I will show you how our famous American landscape architect, Mr.
+Olmstead, has treated the slope."
+
+There was something humorous, and a little pathetic in the contrasted
+figures of the Vicomte and their hostess crossing the lawn in front of
+them.  Mr. Spence paused a moment to light his cigarette, and he seemed
+to derive infinite pleasure from this juxtaposition.
+
+"Got left,--didn't he?" he said.
+
+To this observation there was, obviously, no answer.
+
+"I'm not very strong on foreigners," he declared.  "An American is good
+enough for me.  And there's something about that fellow which would make
+me a little slow in trusting him with a woman I cared for."
+
+"If you are beginning to worry over Mrs. Holt," said Honora, "we'd better
+walk a little faster."
+
+Mr. Spence's delight at this sally was so unrestrained as to cause the
+couple ahead to turn.  The Vicomte's expression was reproachful.
+
+"Where's Susan?"  asked Mrs. Holt.
+
+"I think she must have gone in the house," Honora answered.
+
+"You two seem to be having a very good time."
+
+"Oh, we're hitting it off fairly well," said Mr. Spence, no doubt for
+the benefit of the Vicomte.  And he added in a confidential tone,
+"Aren't we?"
+
+"Not on the subject of the Vicomte," she replied promptly.  "I like him.
+I like French people."
+
+"What!" he exclaimed, halting in his steps, "you don't take that man
+seriously?"
+
+"I haven't known him long enough to take him seriously," said Honora.
+
+"There's a blindness about women," he declared, "that's incomprehensible.
+They'll invest in almost any old thing if the certificates are
+beautifully engraved.  If you were a man, you wouldn't trust that
+Frenchman to give you change for five dollars."
+
+"French people," proclaimed Honora, "have a light touch of which we
+Americans are incapable.  We do not know how to relax."
+
+"A light touch!" cried Mr. Spence, delightedly, "that about describes the
+Vicomte."
+
+"I'm sure you do him an injustice," said Honora.
+
+"We'll see," said Mr. Spence.  "Mrs. Holt is always picking up queer
+people like that.  She's noted for it."  He turned to her.  How did you
+happen to come here?"
+
+"I came with Susan," she replied, amusedly, "from boarding-school at
+Sutcliffe."
+
+"From boarding-school!"
+
+She rather enjoyed his surprise.
+
+"You don't mean to say you are Susan's age?"
+
+"How old did you think I was?" she asked.
+
+"Older than Susan," he said surveying her.
+
+"No, I'm a mere child, I'm nineteen."
+
+"But I thought--" he began, and paused and lighted another cigarette.
+
+Her eyes lighted mischievously.
+
+"You thought that I had been out several years, and that I'd seen a good
+deal of the world, and that I lived in New York, and that it was strange
+you didn't know me.  But New York is such an enormous place I suppose one
+can't know everybody there."
+
+"And--where do you come from, if I may ask?" he said.
+
+"St. Louis.  I was brought to this country before I was two years old,
+from France.  Mrs. Holt brought me.  And I have never been out of St.
+Louis since, except to go to Sutcliffe.  There you have my history.  Mrs.
+Holt would probably have told it to you, if I hadn't."
+
+"And Mrs. Holt brought you to this country?"
+
+Honora explained, not without a certain enjoyment.
+
+"And how do you happen to be here?" she demanded.  "Are you a member of--
+of the menagerie?"
+
+He had the habit of throwing back his head when he laughed.  This, of
+course, was a thing to laugh over, and now he deemed it audacity.  Five
+minutes before he might have given it another name there is no use in
+saying that the recital of Honora's biography had not made a difference
+with Mr. Howard Pence, and that he was not a little mortified at his
+mistake.  What he had supposed her to be must remain a matter of
+conjecture.  He was, however, by no means aware how thoroughly this
+unknown and inexperienced young woman had read his thoughts in her
+regard.  And if the truth be told, he was on the whole relieved that she
+was nobody.  He was just an ordinary man, provided with no sixth sense or
+premonitory small voice to warn him that masculine creatures are often in
+real danger at the moment when they feel most secure.
+
+It is certain that his manner changed, and during the rest of the walk
+she listened demurely when he talked about Wall Street, with casual
+references to the powers that be.  It was evident that Mr. Howard Spence
+was one who had his fingers on the pulse of affairs.  Ambition leaped in
+him.
+
+They reached the house in advance of Mrs. Holt and the Vicomte, and
+Honora went to her room.
+
+At dinner, save for a little matter of a casual remark when Mr. Holt had
+assumed the curved attitude in which he asked grace, Mr. Spence had a
+veritable triumph.  Self-confidence was a quality which Honora admired.
+He was undaunted by Mrs. Holt, and advised Mrs. Robert, if she had any
+pin-money, to buy New York Central; and he predicted an era of prosperity
+which would be unexampled in the annals of the country.  Among other
+powers, he quoted the father of Honora's schoolmate, Mr. James Wing, as
+authority for this prophecy.  He sat next to Susan, who maintained her
+usual maidenly silence, but Honora, from time to time, and as though by
+accident, caught his eye.  Even Mr. Holt, when not munching his dried
+bread, was tempted to make some inquiries about the market.
+
+"So far as I am concerned," Mrs. Holt announced suddenly, "nothing can
+convince me that it is not gambling."
+
+"My dear Elvira!" protested Mr. Holt.
+
+"I can't help it," said that lady, stoutly; "I'm old-fashioned, I
+suppose.  But it seems to me like legalized gambling."
+
+Mr. Spence took this somewhat severe arraignment of his career in
+admirable good nature.  And if these be such a thing as an implied wink,
+Honora received one as he proceeded to explain what he was pleased to
+call the bona-fide nature of the transactions of Dallam and Spence.
+
+A discussion ensued in which, to her surprise, even the ordinarily
+taciturn Joshua took a part, and maintained that the buying and selling
+of blooded stock was equally gambling.  To this his father laughingly
+agreed.  The Vicomte, who sat on Mrs. Holt's right, and who apparently
+was determined not to suffer a total eclipse without a struggle,
+gallantly and unexpectedly came to his hostess' rescue, though she
+treated him as a doubtful ally.  This was because he declared with
+engaging frankness that in France the young men of his monde had a
+jeunesse: he, who spoke to them, had gambled; everybody gambled in
+France, where it was regarded as an innocent amusement.  He had friends
+on the Bourse, and he could see no difference in principle between
+betting on the red at Monte Carlo and the rise and fall of the shares of
+la Compagnie des Metaux, for example.  After completing his argument,
+he glanced triumphantly about the table, until his restless black eyes
+encountered Honora's, seemingly seeking a verdict.  She smiled
+impartially.
+
+The subject of finance lasted through the dinner, and the Vicomte
+proclaimed himself amazed with the evidences of wealth which confronted
+him on every side in this marvellous country.  And once, when he was at
+a loss for a word, Honora astonished and enchanted him by supplying it.
+
+"Ah, Mademoiselle," he exclaimed, "I was sure when I first beheld you
+that you spoke my language!  And with such an accent!"
+
+"I have studied it all my life, Vicomte," she said, modestly, "and I had
+the honour to be born in your country.  I have always wished to see it
+again."
+
+Monsieur de Toqueville ventured the fervent hope that her wish might soon
+be gratified, but not before he returned to France.  He expressed himself
+in French, and in a few moments she found herself deep in a discussion
+with him in that tongue.  While she talked, her veins seemed filled with
+fire; and she was dimly and automatically aware of the disturbance about
+her, as though she were creating a magnetic storm that interfered with
+all other communication.  Mr. Holt's nightly bezique, which he played
+with Susan, did not seem to be going as well as usual, and elsewhere
+conversation was a palpable pretence.  Mr. Spence, who was attempting to
+entertain the two daughters-in-law, was clearly distrait--if his glances
+meant anything.  Robert and Joshua had not appeared, and Mrs. Holt, at
+the far end of the room under the lamp, regarded Honora from time to time
+over the edge of the evening newspaper.
+
+In his capacity as a student of American manners, an unsuspected if
+scattered knowledge on Honora's part of that portion of French literature
+included between Theophile Gautier and Gyp at once dumfounded and
+delighted the Vicomte de Toqueville.  And he was curious to know whether,
+amongst American young ladies, Miss Leffingwell was the exception or the
+rule.  Those eyes of his, which had paid to his hostess a tender respect,
+snapped when they spoke to our heroine, and presently he boldly abandoned
+literature to declare that the fates alone had sent her to Silverdale at
+the time of his visit.
+
+It was at this interesting juncture that Mrs. Holt rattled her newspaper
+a little louder than usual, arose majestically, and addressed Mrs.
+Joshua.
+
+"Annie, perhaps you will play for us," she said, as she crossed the room,
+and added to Honora: "I had no idea you spoke French so well, my dear.
+What have you and Monsieur de Toqueville been talking about?"
+
+It was the Vicomte who, springing to his feet, replied nimbly:
+"Mademoiselle has been teaching me much of the customs of your country."
+
+"And what," inquired Mrs. Holt, "have you been teaching Mademoiselle?"
+
+The Vicomte laughed and shrugged his shoulders expressively.
+
+"Ah, Madame, I wish I were qualified to be her teacher.  The education of
+American young ladies is truly extraordinary."
+
+"I was about to tell Monsieur de Toqueville," put in Honora, wickedly,
+"that he must see your Institution as soon as possible, and the work your
+girls are doing."
+
+"Madame," said the Vicomte, after a scarcely perceptible pause, "I await
+my opportunity and your kindness."
+
+"I will take you to-morrow," said Mrs. Holt.
+
+At this instant a sound closely resembling a sneeze caused them to turn.
+Mr. Spence, with his handkerchief to his mouth, had his back turned to
+them, and was studiously regarding the bookcases.
+
+After Honora had gone upstairs for the night she opened her door in
+response to a knock, to find Mrs. Holt on the threshold.
+
+"My dear," said that lady, "I feel that I must say a word to you.  I
+suppose you realize that you are attractive to men."
+
+"Oh, Mrs. Holt."
+
+"You're no fool, my dear, and it goes without saying that you-do realize
+it--in the most innocent way, of course.  But you have had no experience
+in life.  Mind you, I don't say that the Vicomte de Toqueville isn't very
+much of a gentleman, but the French ideas about the relations of young
+men and young women are quite different and, I regret to say, less
+innocent than ours.  I have no reason to believe that the Vicomte has
+come to this country to--to mend his fortunes.  I know nothing about his
+property.  But my sense of responsibility towards you has led me to tell
+him that you have no dot, for you somehow manage to give the impression
+of a young woman of fortune.  Not purposely, my dear--I did not mean
+that."  Mrs. Holt tapped gently Honora's flaming cheek.  "I merely felt
+it my duty to drop you a word of warning against Monsieur de Toqueville--
+because he is a Frenchman."
+
+"But, Mrs. Holt, I had no idea of--of falling in love with him,"
+protested Honora, as soon as she could get her breath.  He seemed so kind
+--and so interested in everything.
+
+"I dare say," said Mrs. Holt, dryly.  "And I have always been led to
+believe that that is the most dangerous sort.  I am sure, Honora, after
+what I have said, you will give him no encouragement."
+
+"Oh, Mrs. Holt," cried Honora again, "I shouldn't think of such a thing!"
+
+"I am sure of it, Honora, now that you are forewarned.  And your
+suggestion to take him to the Institution was not a bad one.  I meant to
+do so anyway, and I think it will be good for him.  Good night, my dear."
+
+After the good lady bad gone, Honora stood for some moments motionless.
+Then she turned out the light.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+IN WHICH THE VICOMTE CONTINUES HIS STUDIES
+
+Mr. Robert Holt, Honora learned at breakfast, had two bobbies.  She had
+never heard of what is called Forestry, and had always believed the wood
+of her country to be inexhaustible.  It had never occurred to her to
+think of a wild forest as an example of nature's extravagance, and so
+flattering was her attention while Robert explained the primary
+principles of caring for trees that he actually offered to show her
+one of the tracts on the estate which he was treating.  He could not,
+--he regretted to say, take her that morning.
+
+His other hobby was golf.  He was president of the Sutton Golf Club, and
+had arranged to play a match with Mr. Spence.  This gentleman, it
+appeared, was likewise an enthusiast, and had brought to Silverdale a
+leather bag filled with sticks.
+
+"Won't you come, too, Miss Leffingwell?" he said, as he took a second cup
+of coffee.
+
+Somewhat to the astonishment of the Holt family, Robert seconded the
+invitation.
+
+"I'll bet, Robert," said Mr. Spence, gallantly, "that Miss Leffingwell
+can put it over both of us."
+
+"Indeed, I can't play at all," exclaimed Honora in confusion.  "And I
+shouldn't think of spoiling your match.  And besides, I am going to drive
+with Susan."
+
+"We can go another day, Honora," said Susan.
+
+But Honora would not hear of it.
+
+"Come over with me this afternoon, then," suggested Mr. Spence, "and I'll
+give you a lesson."
+
+She thanked him gratefully.
+
+"But it won't be much fun for you, I'm afraid," she added, as they left
+the dining room.
+
+"Don't worry about me," he answered cheerfully.  He was dressed in a
+checked golf costume, and wore a pink shirt of a new pattern.  And he
+stood in front of her in the hall, glowing from his night's sleep,
+evidently in a high state of amusement.
+
+"What's the matter?" she demanded.
+
+"You did for the Vicomte all right," he said.  "I'd give a good deal to
+see him going through the Institution."
+
+"It wouldn't have hurt you, either," she retorted, and started up the
+stairs.  Once she glanced back and saw him looking after her.
+
+At the far end of the second story hall she perceived the Vicomte, who
+had not appeared at breakfast, coming out of his room.  She paused with
+her hand on the walnut post and laughed a little, so ludicrous was his
+expression as he approached her.
+
+"Ah, Mademoiselle, que vous etes mechante!" he exclaimed.  "But I forgive
+you, if you will not go off with that stock-broker.  It must be that
+I see the Home sometime, and if I go now it is over.  I forgive you.
+It is in the Bible that we must forgive our neighbour--how many times?"
+
+"Seventy times seven," said Honora.
+
+"But I make a condition," said the Vicomte, "that my neighbour shall be a
+woman, and young and beautiful.  Then I care not how many times.
+Mademoiselle, if you would but have your portrait painted as you are,
+with your hand on the post, by Sargent or Carolus Duran, there would be
+some noise in the Salon."
+
+"Is that you, Vicomte?" came a voice from the foot of the stairs--Mrs.
+Holt's voice.
+
+"I come this instant, Madame," he replied, looking over the banisters,
+and added: "malheureux que je suis!  Perhaps, when I return, you will
+show me a little of the garden."
+
+The duty of exhibiting to guests the sights of Silverdale and the
+neighbourhood had so often devolved upon Susan, who was methodical, that
+she had made out a route, or itinerary, for this purpose.  There were
+some notes to leave and a sick woman and a child to see, which caused her
+to vary it a little that morning; and Honora, who sat in the sunlight and
+held the horse, wondered how it would feel to play the lady bountiful.
+"I am so glad to have you all to myself for a little while, Honora,"
+Susan said to her.  "You are so popular that I begin to fear that I shall
+have to be unselfish, and share you."
+
+"Oh, Susan," she said, "every one has been so kind.  And I can't tell
+you how much I am enjoying this experience, which I feel I owe to you."
+
+"I am so happy, dear, that it is giving you pleasure," said Susan.
+
+"And don't think," exclaimed Honora, "that you won't see lots of me,
+for you will."
+
+Her heart warmed to Susan, yet she could not but feel a secret pity for
+her, as one unable to make the most of her opportunities in the wonderful
+neighbourhood in which she lived.  As they drove through the roads and in
+and out of the well-kept places, everybody they met had a bow and a smile
+for her friend--a greeting such as people give to those for whom they
+have only good-will.  Young men and girls waved their racquets at her
+from the tennis-courts; and Honora envied them and wished that she, too,
+were a part of the gay life she saw, and were playing instead of being
+driven decorously about.  She admired the trim, new houses in which they
+lived, set upon the slopes of the hills.  Pleasure houses, they seemed to
+her, built expressly for joys which had been denied her.
+
+"Do you see much of--of these people, Susan?" she asked.
+
+"Not so much as I'd like," replied Susan, seriously.  "I never seem to
+get time.  We nearly always have guests at Silverdale, and then there are
+so many things one has to attend to.  Perhaps you have noticed," she
+added, smiling a little, "that we are very serious and old-fashioned."
+
+"Oh, no indeed," protested Honora.  "It is such a wonderful experience
+for me to be here!"
+
+"Well," said Susan, "we're having some young people to dinner to-night,
+and others next week--that's why I'm leaving these notes.  And then we
+shall be a little livelier."
+
+"Really, Susan, you mustn't think that I'm not having a good time.  It is
+exciting to be in the same house with a real French Vicomte, and I like
+Mr. Spence tremendously."
+
+Her friend was silent.
+
+"Don't you?" demanded Honora.
+
+To her surprise, the usually tolerant Susan did not wholly approve of Mr.
+Spence.
+
+"He is a guest, and I ought not to criticise him," she answered.  "But
+since you ask me, Honora, I have to be honest.  It seems to me that his
+ambitions are a little sordid--that he is too intent upon growing rich."
+
+"But I thought all New Yorkers were that way," exclaimed Honora, and
+added hastily, "except a few, like your family, Susan."
+
+Susan laughed.
+
+"You should marry a diplomat, my dear," she said.  "After all, perhaps
+I am a little harsh.  But there is a spirit of selfishness and--and of
+vulgarity in modern, fashionable New York which appears to be catching,
+like a disease.  The worship of financial success seems to be in every
+one's blood."
+
+"It is power," said Honora.
+
+Susan glanced at her, but Honora did not remark the expression on her
+friend's face, so intent was she on the reflections which Susan's words
+had aroused.  They had reached the far end of the Silverdale domain, and
+were driving along the shore of the lake that lay like a sapphire set
+amongst the green hills.  It was here that the new house of the Robert
+Holts was building.  Presently they came to Joshua's dairy farm, and
+Joshua himself was standing in the doorway of one of his immaculate barn
+Honora put her hand on Susan's arm.
+
+"Can't we see the cows?"  she asked.
+
+Susan looked surprised.
+
+"I didn't know you were interested in cows, Honora."
+
+"I am interested in everything," said Honora: "and I think your brother
+is so attractive."
+
+It was at this moment that Joshua, with his hands in his pockets,
+demanded what his sister was doing there.
+
+"Miss Leffingwell wants to look at the cattle, Josh," called Susan.
+
+"Won't you show them to me, Mr. Holt," begged Honora.  "I'd like so much
+to see some really good cattle, and to know a little more about them."
+
+Joshua appeared incredulous.  But, being of the male sex, he did not hide
+the fact that he was pleased, "it seems strange to have somebody really
+want to see them," he said.  "I tried to get Spence to come back this
+way, but the idea didn't seem to appeal to him.  Here are some of the
+records."
+
+"Records?" repeated Honora, looking at a mass of typewritten figures on
+the wall.  "Do you mean to say you keep such an exact account of all the
+milk you get?"
+
+Joshua laughed, and explained.  She walked by his side over the concrete
+paving to the first of the varnished stalls.
+
+"That," he said, and a certain pride had come into his voice, "is Lady
+Guinevere, and those ribbons are the prizes she has taken on both sides
+of the water."
+
+"Isn't she a dear!" exclaimed Honora; "why, she's actually beautiful.
+I didn't know cows could be so beautiful."
+
+"She isn't bad," admitted Joshua.  "Of course the good points in a cow
+aren't necessarily features of beauty for instance, these bones here,"
+he added, pointing to the hips.
+
+"But they seem to add, somehow, to the thoroughbred appearance," Honora
+declared.
+
+"That's absolutely true," replied Joshua,--whereupon he began to talk.
+And Honora, still asking questions, followed him from stall to stall.
+"There are some more in the pasture," he said, when they had reached the
+end of the second building.
+
+"Oh, couldn't I see them?" she asked.
+
+"Surely," replied Joshua, with more of alacrity than one would have
+believed him capable.  "I'll tell Susan to drive on, and you and I will
+walk home across the fields, if you like."
+
+"I should love to," said Honora.
+
+It was not without astonishment that the rest of the Holt family beheld
+them returning together as the gongs were sounding for luncheon.  Mrs.
+Holt, upon perceiving them, began at once to shake her head and laugh.
+
+"My dear, it can't be that you have captivated Joshua!" she exclaimed, in
+a tone that implied the carrying of a stronghold hitherto thought
+impregnable.
+
+Honora blushed, whether from victory or embarrassment, or both, it is
+impossible to say.
+
+"I'm afraid it's just the other way, Mrs. Holt," she replied; "Mr. Holt
+has captivated me."
+
+"We'll call it mutual, Miss Leffingwell," declared Joshua, which was for
+him the height of gallantry.
+
+"I only hope he hasn't bored you," said the good-natured Mrs. Joshua.
+
+"Oh, dear, no," exclaimed Honora.  "I  don't see bow any one could be
+bored looking at such magnificent animals as that Hardicanute."
+
+It was at this moment that her eyes were drawn, by a seemingly resistless
+attraction, to Mrs. Robert's face.  Her comment upon this latest
+conquest, though unexpressed, was disquieting.  And in spite of herself,
+Honora blushed again.
+
+At luncheon, in the midst of a general conversation, Mr. Spence made a
+remark sotto voce which should, in the ordinary course of events, have
+remained a secret.
+
+"Susan," he said, "your friend Miss Leffingwell is a fascinator.  She's
+got Robert's scalp, too, and he thought it a pretty good joke because I
+offered to teach her to play golf this afternoon."
+
+It appeared that Susan's eyes could flash indignantly.  Perhaps she
+resented Mr. Spence's calling her by her first name.
+
+"Honora Leffingwell is the most natural and unspoiled person I know," she
+said.
+
+There is, undoubtedly, a keen pleasure and an ample reward in teaching
+a pupil as apt and as eager to learn as Honora.  And Mr. Spence, if he
+attempted at all to account for the swiftness with which the hours of
+that long afternoon slipped away, may have attributed their flight to the
+discovery in himself of hitherto latent talent for instruction.  At the
+little Casino, he had bought, from the professional in charge of the
+course, a lady's driver; and she practised with exemplary patience the
+art of carrying one's hands through and of using the wrists in the
+stroke.
+
+"Not quite, Miss Leffingwell," he would say, "but so."
+
+Honora would try again.
+
+"That's unusually good for a beginner, but you are inclined to chop it
+off a little still.  Let it swing all the way round."
+
+"Oh, dear, how you must hate me!"
+
+"Hate you?" said Mr. Spence, searching in vain for words with which to
+obliterate such a false impression.  "Anything but that!"
+
+"Isn't it a wonderful, spot?" she exclaimed, gazing off down the swale,
+emerald green in the afternoon light between its forest walls.  In the
+distance, Silver Brook was gleaming amidst the meadows.  They sat down on
+one of the benches and watched the groups of players pass.  Mr. Spence
+produced his cigarette case, and presented it to her playfully.
+
+"A little quiet whiff," he suggested.  "There's not much chance over at
+the convent," and she gathered that it was thus he was pleased to
+designate Silverdale.
+
+In one instant she was doubtful whether or not to be angry, and in the
+next grew ashamed of the provincialism which had caused her to suspect an
+insult.  She took a cigarette, and he produced a gold match case, lighted
+a match, and held it up for her.  Honora blew it out.
+
+"You didn't think seriously that I smoked?" she asked, glancing at him.
+
+"Why not?" he asked; "any number of girls do."
+
+She tore away some of the rice paper and lifted the tobacco to her nose,
+and made a little grimace.
+
+"Do you like to see women smoke?"  she asked.
+
+Mr. Spence admitted that there was something cosey about the custom, when
+it was well done.
+
+"And I imagine," he added, "that you'd do it well."
+
+"I'm sure I should make a frightful mess of it," she protested modestly.
+
+"You do everything well," he said.
+
+"Even golf?"  she inquired mischievously.
+
+"Even golf, for a beginner and--and a woman; you've got the swing in an
+astonishingly short time.  In fact, you've been something of an eye-
+opener to me," he declared.  "If I had been betting, I should have placed
+the odds about twenty to one against your coming from the West."
+
+This Eastern complacency, although it did not lower Mr. Spence in her
+estimation, aroused Honora's pride.
+
+"That shows how little New Yorkers know of the West," she replied,
+laughing.  "Didn't you suppose there were any gentlewomen there?"
+
+"Gentlewomen," repeated Mr. Spence, as though puzzled by the word,
+"gentlewomen, yes.  But you might have been born anywhere."
+
+Even her sense of loyalty to her native place was not strong enough to
+override this compliment.
+
+"I like a girl with some dash and go to her," he proclaimed, and there
+could be no doubt about the one to whom he was attributing these
+qualities.  "Savoir faire, as the French call it, and all that.  I don't
+know much about that language, but the way you talk it makes Mrs. Holt's
+French and Susan's sound silly.  I watched you last night when you were
+stringing the Vicomte."
+
+"Oh, did you?" said Honora, demurely.
+
+"You may have thought I was talking to Mrs. Robert," he said.
+
+"I wasn't thinking anything about you," replied Honora, indignantly.
+"And besides, I wasn't I stringing' the Vicomte.  In the West we don't
+use anything like so much slang as you seem to use in New York."
+
+"Oh, come now!" he exclaimed, laughingly, and apparently not the least
+out of countenance, "you made him think he was the only pebble on the
+beach.  I have no idea what you were talking about."
+
+"Literature," she said.  "Perhaps that was the reason why you couldn't
+understand it."
+
+"He may be interested in literature," replied Mr. Spence, "but it
+wouldn't be a bad guess to say that he was more interested in stocks and
+bonds."
+
+"He doesn't talk about them, at any rate," said Honora.
+
+"I'd respect him more if he did," he announced.  "I know those fellows-
+they make love to every woman they meet.  I saw him eying you at lunch."
+
+Honora laughed.
+
+"I imagine the Vicomte could make love charmingly," she said.
+
+Mr. Spence suddenly became very solemn.
+
+"Merely as a fellow-countryman, Miss Leffingwell--" he began, when she
+sprang to her feet, her eyes dancing, and finished the sentence.
+
+"You would advise me to be on my guard against him, because, although I
+look twenty-five and experienced, I am only nineteen and inexperienced.
+Thank you."
+
+He paused to light another cigarette before he followed her across the
+turf.  But she had the incomprehensible feminine satisfaction of knowing,
+as they walked homeward, that the usual serenity of his disposition was
+slightly ruffled.
+
+A sudden caprice impelled her, in the privacy of her bedroom that
+evening, to draw his portrait for Peter Erwin.  The complacency of New
+York men was most amusing, she wrote, and the amount of slang they used
+would have been deemed vulgar in St. Louis.  Nevertheless, she liked
+people to be sure of themselves, and there was something "insolent"
+about New York which appealed to her.  Peter, when he read that letter,
+seemed to see Mr. Howard Spence in the flesh; or arrayed, rather, in the
+kind of cloth alluringly draped in the show-windows of fashionable
+tailors.  For Honora, all unconsciously, wrote literature.  Literature
+was invented before phonographs, and will endure after them.  Peter could
+hear Mr. Spence talk, for a part of that gentleman's conversation--
+a characteristic part--was faithfully transcribed.  And Peter detected a
+strain of admiration running even through the ridicule.
+
+Peter showed that letter to Aunt Mary, whom it troubled, and to Uncle
+Tom, who laughed over it.  There was also a lifelike portrait of the
+Vicomte, followed by the comment that he was charming, but very French;
+but the meaning of this last, but quite obvious, attribute remained
+obscure.  He was possessed of one of the oldest titles and one of the
+oldest chateaux in France.  (Although she did not say so, Honora had this
+on no less authority than that of the Vicomte himself.)  Mrs. Holt--with
+her Victorian brooch and ear-rings and her watchful delft-blue eyes that
+somehow haunted one even when she was out of sight, with her ample bosom
+and the really kind heart it contained--was likewise depicted; and Mr.
+Holt, with his dried bread, and his garden which Honora wished Uncle Tom
+could see, and his prayers that lacked imagination.  Joshua and his cows,
+Robert and his forest, Susan and her charities, the Institution, jolly
+Mrs. Joshua and enigmatical Mrs. Robert--all were there: and even a
+picture of the dinner-party that evening, when Honora sat next to a young
+Mr. Patterson with glasses and a studious manner, who knew George Hanbury
+at Harvard.  The other guests were a florid Miss Chamberlin, whose person
+loudly proclaimed possessions, and a thin Miss Longman, who rented one of
+the Silverdale cottages and sketched.
+
+Honora was seeing life.  She sent her love to Peter, and begged him to
+write to her.
+
+The next morning a mysterious change seemed to have passed over the
+members of the family during the night.  It was Sunday.  Honora, when she
+left her room, heard a swishing on the stairs--Mrs. Joshua, stiffly
+arrayed for the day.  Even Mrs. Robert swished, but Mrs. Holt, in a
+bronze-coloured silk, swished most of all as she entered the library
+after a brief errand to the housekeeper's room.  Mr. Holt was already
+arranging his book-marks in the Bible, while Joshua and Robert, in black
+cutaways that seemed to have the benumbing and paralyzing effect of
+strait-jackets, wandered aimlessly about the room, as though its walls
+were the limit of their movements.  The children had a subdued and touch-
+me-not air that reminded Honora of her own youth.
+
+It was not until prayers were over and the solemn gathering seated at
+the breakfast table that Mr. Spence burst upon it like an aurora.  His
+flannel suit was of the lightest of grays; he wore white tennis shoes and
+a red tie, and it was plain, as he cheerfully bade them good morning,
+that he was wholly unaware of the enormity of his costume.  There was a
+choking, breathless moment before Mrs. Holt broke the silence.
+
+"Surely, Howard," she said, "you're not going to church in those
+clothes."
+
+"I hadn't thought of going to church," replied Mr. Spence, helping
+himself to cherries.
+
+"What do you intend to do?" asked his hostess.
+
+"Read the stock reports for the week as soon as the newspapers arrive."
+
+"There is no such thing as a Sunday newspaper in my house," said Mrs.
+Holt.
+
+"No Sunday newspapers!"  he exclaimed.  And his eyes, as they encountered
+Honora's,--who sought to avoid them,--expressed a genuine dismay.
+
+"I am afraid," said Mrs. Holt, "that I was right when I spoke of the
+pernicious effect of Wall Street upon young men.  Your mother did not
+approve of Sunday newspapers."
+
+During the rest of the meal, although he made a valiant attempt to hold
+his own, Mr. Spence was, so to speak, outlawed.  Robert and Joshua must
+have had a secret sympathy for him.  One of them mentioned the Vicomte.
+
+"The Vicomte is a foreigner," declared Mrs. Holt.  "I am in no sense
+responsible for him."
+
+The Vicomte was at that moment propped up in bed, complaining to his
+valet about the weakness of the coffee.  He made the remark (which he
+afterwards repeated to Honora) that weak coffee and the Protestant
+religion seemed inseparable; but he did not attempt to discover the
+whereabouts, in Sutton, of the Church of his fathers.  He was not in the
+best of humours that morning, and his toilet had advanced no further
+when, an hour or so later, he perceived from behind his lace curtains Mr.
+Howard Spence, dressed with comparative soberness, handing Honora into
+the omnibus.  The incident did not serve to improve the cynical mood in
+which the Vicomte found himself.
+
+Indeed, the Vicomte, who had a theory concerning Mr. Spence's church-
+going, was not far from wrong.  As may have been suspected, it was to
+Honora that credit was due.  It was Honora whom Mr. Spence sought after
+breakfast, and to whom he declared that her presence alone prevented him
+from leaving that afternoon.  It was Honora who told him that he ought to
+be ashamed of himself.  And it was to Honora, after church was over and
+they were walking homeward together along the dusty road, that Mr. Spence
+remarked by way of a delicate compliment that "the morning had not been a
+total loss, after all!"
+
+The little Presbyterian church stood on a hillside just outside of the
+village and was, as far as possible, the possession of the Holt family.
+The morning sunshine illuminated the angels in the Holt memorial window,
+and the inmates of the Holt Institution occupied all the back pews.  Mrs.
+Joshua played the organ, and Susan, with several young women and a young
+man with a long coat and plastered hair, sang in the choir.  The sermon
+of the elderly minister had to do with beliefs rather than deeds, and was
+the subject of discussion at luncheon.
+
+"It is very like a sermon I found in my room," said Honora.
+
+"I left that book in your room, my dear, in the hope that you would not
+overlook it," said Mrs. Holt, approvingly.  "Joshua, I wish you would
+read that sermon aloud to us."
+
+"Oh, do, Mr. Holt!" begged Honora.
+
+The Vicomte, who had been acting very strangely during the meal, showed
+unmistakable signs of a futile anger.  He had asked Honora to walk with
+him.
+
+"Of course," added Mrs. Holt, "no one need listen who doesn't wish to.
+Since you were good enough to reconsider your decision and attend divine
+service, Howard, I suppose I should be satisfied."
+
+The reading took place in the library.  Through the open window Honora
+perceived the form of Joshua asleep in the hammock, his Sunday coat all
+twisted under him.  It worried her to picture his attire when he should
+wake up.  Once Mrs. Robert looked in, smiled, said nothing, and went out
+again.  At length, in a wicker chair under a distant tree on the lawn,
+Honora beheld the dejected outline of the Vicomte.  He was trying to
+read, but every once in a while would lay down his book and gaze
+protractedly at the house, stroking his mustache.  The low song of the
+bees around the shrubbery vied with Mr. Holt's slow reading.  On the
+whole, the situation delighted Honora, who bit her lip to refrain from
+smiling at M. de Toqueville.  When at last she emerged from the library,
+he rose precipitately and came towards her across the lawn, lifting his
+hands towards the pitiless puritan skies.
+
+"Enfin!" he exclaimed tragically.  "Ah, Mademoiselle, never in my life
+have I passed such a day!"
+
+"Are you ill, Vicomte?" she asked.
+
+"Ill!  Were it not for you, I would be gone.  You alone sustain me--it is
+for the pleasure of seeing you that I suffer.  What kind of a menage is
+this, then, where I am walked around Institutions, where I am forced to
+listen to the exposition of doctrines, where the coffee is weak, where
+Sunday, which the bon Dieu set aside for a jour de fete resembles to a
+day in purgatory?"
+
+"But, Vicomte," Honora laughed, "you must remember that you are in
+America, and that you have come here to study our manners and customs."
+
+"Ah, no," he cried, "ah, no, it cannot all be like this!  I will not
+believe it.  Mr. Holt, who sought to entertain me before luncheon,
+offered to show me his collection of Chinese carvings!  I, who might be
+at Trouville or Cabourg!  If it were not for you, Mademoiselle, I should
+not stay here--not one little minute," he said, with a slow intensity.
+"Behold what I suffer for your sake!"
+
+"For my sake?" echoed Honora.
+
+"For what else?" demanded the Vicomte, gazing upon her with the eyes of
+martyrdom.  "It is not for my health, alas!  Between the coffee and this
+dimanche I have the vertigo."
+
+Honora laughed again at the memory of the dizzy Sunday afternoons of her
+childhood, when she had been taken to see Mr. Isham's curios.
+
+"You are cruel," said the Vicomte; "you laugh at my tortures."
+
+"On the contrary, I think I understand them," she replied.  "I have often
+felt the same way."
+
+"My instinct was true, then," he cried triumphantly; "the first time my
+eyes fell on you, I said to myself, 'ah! there is one who understands.'
+And I am seldom mistaken."
+
+"Your experience with the opposite sex," ventured Honora, "must have made
+you infallible."
+
+He shrugged and smiled, as one whose modesty forbade the mention of
+conquests.
+
+"You do not belong here either, Mademoiselle," he said.  "You are not
+like these people.  You have temperament, and a future--believe me.
+Why do you waste your time?"
+
+"What do you mean, Vicomte?"
+
+"Ah, it is not necessary to explain what I mean.  It is that you do not
+choose to understand--you are far too clever.  Why is it, then, that you
+bore yourself by regarding Institutions and listening to sermons in your
+jeunesse?  It is all very well for Mademoiselle Susan, but you are not
+created for a religieuse.  And again, it pleases you to spend hours with
+the stockbroker, who is as lacking in esprit as the bull of Joshua.  He
+is no companion for you."
+
+"I am afraid," she said reprovingly, "that you do not understand Mr.
+Spence."
+
+"Par exemple!" cried the Vicomte; "have I not seen hundreds' like him?
+Do not they come to Paris and live in the great hotels and demand
+cocktails and read the stock reports and send cablegrams all the day
+long? and go to the Folies Bergeres, and yawn?  Nom de nom, of what does
+his conversation consist?  Of the price of railroads;--is it not so?
+I, who speak to you, have talked to him.  Does he know how to make love?"
+
+"That accomplishment is not thought of very highly in America," Honora
+replied.
+
+"It is because you are a new country," he declared.
+
+"And you are mad over money.  Money has taken the place of love."
+
+"Is money so despised in France?"  she asked.  "I have heard--that you
+married for it!"
+
+"Touch!" cried the Vicomte, laughing.  "You see, I am frank with you.  We
+marry for money, yes, but we do not make a god of it.  It is our servant.
+You make it, and we enjoy it.  Yes, and you, Mademoiselle--you, too, were
+made to enjoy.  You do not belong here," he said, with a disdainful sweep
+of the arm.  "Ah, I have solved you.  You have in you the germ of the
+Riviera.  You were born there."
+
+Honora wondered if what he said were true.  Was she different?  She was
+having a great deal of pleasure at Silverdale; even the sermon reading,
+which would have bored her at home, had interested and amused her.  But
+was it not from the novelty of these episodes, rather than from their
+special characters, that she received the stimulus?  She glanced
+curiously towards the Vicomte, and met his eye.
+
+They had been walking the while, and had crossed the lawn and entered one
+of the many paths which it had been Robert's pastime to cut through the
+woods.  And at length they came out at a rustic summer-house set over the
+wooded valley.  Honora, with one foot on the ground, sat on the railing
+gazing over the tree-tops; the Vicomte was on the bench beside her.  His
+eyes sparkled and snapped, and suddenly she tingled with a sense that the
+situation was not without an element of danger.
+
+"I had a feeling about you, last night at dinner," he said; "you reminded
+me of a line of Marcel Prevost, 'Cette femme ne sera pas aimee que parmi
+des drames.'"
+
+"Nonsense," said Honora; "last night at dinner you were too much occupied
+with Miss Chamberlin to think of me."
+
+"Ah, Mademoiselle, you have read me strangely if you think that.  I
+talked to her with my lips, yes--but it was of you I was thinking.  I was
+thinking that you were born to play a part in many dramas, that you have
+the fatal beauty which is rare in all ages."  The Vicomte bent towards
+her, and his voice became caressing.  "You cannot realize how beautiful
+you are," he sighed.
+
+Suddenly he seized her hand, and before she could withdraw it she had the
+satisfaction of knowing the sensation of having it kissed.  It was a
+strange sensation indeed.  And the fact that she did not tingle with
+anger alone made her all the more angry.  Trembling, her face burning,
+she leaped down from the railing and fled into the path.  And there,
+seeing that he did not follow, she turned and faced him.  He stood
+staring at her with eyes that had not ceased to sparkle.
+
+"How cowardly of you!" she cried.
+
+"Ah, Mademoiselle," he answered fervently, "I would risk your anger a
+thousand times to see you like that once more.  I cannot help my
+feelings--they were dead indeed if they did not respond to such an
+inspiration.  Let them plead for my pardon."
+
+Honora felt herself melting a little.  After all, there might have been
+some excuse for it, and be made love divinely.  When he had caught up
+with her, his contriteness was such that she was willing to believe he
+had not meant to insult her.  And then, he was a Frenchman.  As a proof
+of his versatility, if not of his good faith, he talked of neutral
+matters on the way back to the house, with the charming ease and
+lightness that was the gift of his race and class.  On the borders of the
+wood they encountered the Robert Holts, walking with their children.
+
+"Madame," said the Vicomte to Gwendolen, "your Silverdale is enchanting.
+We have been to that little summer-house which commands the valley."
+
+"And are you still learning things about our country, Vicomte?" she
+asked, with a glance at Honora.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+IN WHICH HONORA WIDENS HER HORIZON
+
+If it were not a digression, it might be interesting to speculate upon
+the reason why, in view of their expressed opinions of Silverdale, both
+the Vicomte and Mr. Spence remained during the week that followed.
+Robert, who went off in the middle of it with his family to the seashore,
+described it to Honora as a normal week.  During its progress there came
+and went a missionary from China, a pianist, an English lady who had
+heard of the Institution, a Southern spinster with literary gifts, a
+youthful architect who had not built anything, and a young lawyer
+interested in settlement work.
+
+The missionary presented our heroine with a book he had written about the
+Yang-tse-kiang; the Southern lady suspected her of literary gifts; the
+architect walked with her through the woods to the rustic shelter where
+the Vicomte had kissed her hand, and told her that he now comprehended
+the feelings of Christopher Wren when he conceived St. Paul's Cathedral,
+of Michael Angelo when he painted the Sistine Chapel.  Even the serious
+young lawyer succumbed, though not without a struggle.  When he had first
+seen Miss Leffingwell, he confessed, he had thought her frivolous.  He
+had done her an injustice, and wished to acknowledge it before he left.
+And, since she was interested in settlement work, he hoped, if she were
+going through New York, that she would let him know.  It would be a real
+pleasure to show her what he was doing.
+
+Best of all, Honora, by her unselfishness, endeared herself to her
+hostess.
+
+"I can't tell you what a real help you are to me, my dear," said that
+lady.  "You have a remarkable gift with people for so young a girl, and
+I do you the credit of thinking that it all springs from a kind heart."
+
+In the meantime, unknown to Mrs. Holt, who might in all conscience have
+had a knowledge of what may be called social chemistry, a drama was
+slowly unfolding itself.  By no fault of Honora's, of course.  There may
+have been some truth in the quotation of the Vicomte as applied to her--
+that she was destined to be loved only amidst the play of drama.  If
+experience is worth anything, Monsieur de Toqueville should have been an
+expert in matters of the sex.  Could it be possible, Honora asked herself
+more than once, that his feelings were deeper than her feminine instinct
+and, the knowledge she had gleaned from novels led her to suspect?
+
+It is painful to relate that the irregularity and deceit of the life the
+Vicomte was leading amused her, for existence at Silverdale was plainly
+not of a kind to make a gentleman of the Vicomte's temperament and
+habits ecstatically happy.  And Honora was filled with a strange and
+unaccountable delight when she overheard him assuring Mrs. Wellfleet, the
+English lady of eleemosynary tendencies, that he was engaged in a study
+at first hand of Americans.
+
+The time has come to acknowledge frankly that it was Honora he was
+studying--Honora as the type of young American womanhood.  What he did
+not suspect was that young American womanhood was studying him.  Thanks
+to a national System, she had had an apprenticeship; the heart-blood of
+Algernon Cartwright and many others had not been shed in vain.  And the
+fact that she was playing with real fire, that this was a duel with the
+buttons off, lent a piquancy and zest to the pastime which it had
+hitherto lacked.
+
+The Vicomte's feelings were by no means hidden processes to Honora, and
+it was as though she could lift the lid of the furnace at any time and
+behold the growth of the flame which she had lighted.  Nay, nature had
+endowed her with such a gift that she could read the daily temperature
+as by a register hung on the outside, without getting scorched.  Nor had
+there been any design on her part in thus tormenting his soul.  He had
+not meant to remain more than four days at Silverdale, that she knew;
+he had not meant to come to America and fall in love with a penniless
+beauty--that she knew also.  The climax would be interesting, if
+perchance uncomfortable.
+
+It is wonderful what we can find the time to do, if we only try.
+Monsieur de Toqueville lent Honora novels, which she read in bed; but
+being in the full bloom of health and of a strong constitution, this
+practice did not prevent her from rising at seven to take a walk through
+the garden with Mr. Holt--a custom which he had come insensibly to depend
+upon.  And in the brief conversations which she vouchsafed the Vicomte,
+they discussed his novels.  In vain he pleaded, in caressing undertones,
+that she should ride with him.  Honora had never been on a horse, but she
+did not tell him so.  If she would but drive, or walk-only a little way--
+he would promise faithfully not to forget himself.  Honora intimated that
+the period of his probation had not yet expired.  If he waylaid her on
+the stairs, he got but little satisfaction.
+
+"You converse by the hour with the missionaries, and take long promenades
+with the architects and charity workers, but to me you will give
+nothing," he complained.
+
+"The persons of whom you speak are not dangerous," answered Honora,
+giving him a look.
+
+The look, and being called dangerous, sent up the temperature several
+degrees.  Frenchmen are not the only branch of the male sex who are
+complimented by being called dangerous.  The Vicomte was desolated,
+so he said.
+
+"I stay here only for you, and the coffee is slowly deranging me," he
+declared in French, for most of their conversations were in that
+language.  If there were duplicity in this, Honora did not recognize it.
+"I stay here only for you, and how you are cruel!  I live for you--how,
+the good God only knows.  I exist--to see you for ten minutes a day."
+
+"Oh, Vicomte, you exaggerate.  If you were to count it up, I am sure you
+would find that we talk an hour at least, altogether.  And then, although
+I am very young and inexperienced, I can imagine how many conquests you
+have made by the same arts."
+
+"I suffer," he cried; "ah, no, you cannot look at me without perceiving
+it--you who are so heartless.  And when I see you play at golf with that
+Mr. Spence--!"
+
+"Surely," said Honora, "you can't object to my acquiring a new
+accomplishment when I have the opportunity, and Mr. Spence is so kind
+and good-natured about it."
+
+"Do you think I have no eyes?" he exclaimed.  "Have I not seen him look
+at you like the great animal of Joshua when he wants his supper?  He is
+without esprit, without soul.  There is nothing inside of him but money-
+making machinery."
+
+"The most valuable of all machinery," she replied, laughingly.
+
+"If I thought you believed that, Mademoiselle, if I thought you were like
+so many of your countrywomen in this respect, I should leave to-morrow,"
+he declared.
+
+"Don't be too sure, Vicomte," she cautioned him.
+
+If one possessed a sense of humour and a certain knowledge of mankind,
+the spectacle of a young and successful Wall Street broker at Silverdale
+that week was apt to be diverting.  Mr. Spence held his own.  He advised
+the architect to make a specialty of country houses, and promised some
+day to order one: he disputed boldly with the other young man as to the
+practical uses of settlement work, and even measured swords with the
+missionary.  Needless to say, he was not popular with these gentlemen.
+But he was also good-natured and obliging, and he did not object to
+repeating for the English lady certain phrases which she called
+"picturesque expressions," and which she wrote down with a gold pencil.
+
+It is evident, from the Vicomte's remarks, that he found time to continue
+Honora's lessons in golf--or rather that she found time, in the midst of
+her manifold and self-imposed duties, to take them.  And in this
+diversion she was encouraged by Mrs. Holt herself.  On Saturday morning,
+the heat being unusual, they ended their game by common consent at the
+fourth hole and descended a wood road to Silver Brook, to a spot which
+they had visited once before and had found attractive.  Honora, after
+bathing her face in the pool, perched herself on a boulder.  She was very
+fresh and radiant.
+
+This fact, if she had not known it, she might have gathered from Mr.
+Silence's expression.  He had laid down his coat; his sleeves were rolled
+up and his arms were tanned, and he stood smoking a cigarette and gazing
+at her with approbation.  She lowered her eyes.
+
+"Well, we've had a pretty good time, haven't we?" he remarked.
+
+Lightning sometimes fails in its effect, but the look she flashed back at
+him from under her blue lashes seldom misses.
+
+I'm afraid I haven't been a very apt pupil," she replied modestly.
+
+"You're on the highroad to a cup," he assured her.  "If I could take you
+on for another week" He paused, and an expression came into his eyes
+which was not new to Honora, nor peculiar to Mr. Silence.  "I have to go
+back to town on Monday."
+
+If Honora felt any regret at this announcement, she did not express it.
+
+"I thought you couldn't stand Silverdale much longer," she replied.
+
+"You know why I stayed," he said, and paused again--rather awkwardly for
+Mr. Spence.  But Honora was silent.  "I had a letter this morning from my
+partner, Sidney Dallam, calling me back."
+
+"I suppose you are very busy," said Honora, detaching a copper-green
+scale of moss from the boulder.
+
+"The fact is," he explained, "that we have received an order of
+considerable importance, for which I am more or less responsible.
+Something of a compliment--since we are, after all, comparatively young
+men."
+
+"Sometimes," said Honora, "sometimes I wish I were a man.  Women are so
+hampered and circumscribed, and have to wait for things to happen to
+them.  A man can do what he wants.  He can go into Wall Street and fight
+until he controls miles of railroads and thousands and thousands of men.
+That would be a career!"
+
+"Yes," he agreed, smilingly, "it's worth fighting for."
+
+Her eyes were burning with a strange light as she looked down the vista
+of the wood road by which they had come.  He flung his cigarette into the
+water and took a step nearer her.
+
+"How long have I known you?" he asked.
+
+She started.
+
+"Why, it's only a little more than a week," she said.
+
+"Does it seem longer than that to you?"
+
+"Yes," admitted Honora, colouring; "I suppose it's because we've been
+staying in the same house."
+
+"It seems to me," said Mr. Spence, "that I have known you always."
+
+Honora sat very still.  It passed through her brain, without comment,
+that there was a certain haunting familiarity about this remark; some
+other voice, in some other place, had spoken it, and in very much the
+same tone.
+
+"You're the kind of girl I admire," he declared.  "I've been watching
+you--more than you have any idea of.  You're adaptable.  Put you down any
+place, and you take hold.  For instance, it's a marvellous thing to me
+how you've handled all the curiosities up there this week."
+
+"Oh, I like people," said Honora, "they interest me."  And she laughed a
+little, nervously.  She was aware that Mr. Spence was making love, in his
+own manner: the New fork manner, undoubtedly; though what he said was
+changed by the new vibrations in his voice.  He was making love, too,
+with a characteristic lack of apology and with assurance.  She stole a
+glance at him, and beheld the image of a dominating man of affairs.  He
+did not, it is true, evoke in her that extreme sensation which has been
+called a thrill.  She had read somewhere that women were always expecting
+thrills, and never got them.  Nevertheless, she had not realized how
+close a bond of sympathy had grown between them until this sudden
+announcement of his going back to New York.  In a little while she too
+would be leaving for St. Louis.  The probability that she would never
+see him again seemed graver than she would have believed.
+
+"Will you miss me a little?" he asked.
+
+"Oh, yes," she said breathlessly, "and I shall be curious to know how
+your--your enterprise succeeds."
+
+"Honora," he said, "it is only a week since I first met you, but I know
+my own mind.  You are the woman I want, and I think I may say without
+boasting that I can give you what you desire in life--after a while.  I
+love you.  You are young, and just now I felt that perhaps I should have
+waited a year before speaking, but I was afraid of missing altogether
+what I know to be the great happiness of my life.  Will you marry me?"
+
+She sat silent upon the rock.  She heard him speak, it is true; but, try
+as she would, the full significance of his words would not come to her.
+She had, indeed, no idea that he would propose, no notion that his heart
+was involved to such an extent.  He was very near her, but he had not
+attempted to touch her.  His voice, towards the end of his speech, had
+trembled with passion--a true note had been struck.  And she had struck
+it, by no seeming effort!  He wished to marry her!
+
+He aroused her again.
+
+"I have frightened you," he said.
+
+She opened her eyes.  What he beheld in them was not fright--it was
+nothing he had ever seen before.  For the first time in his life,
+perhaps, he was awed.  And, seeing him helpless, she put out her hands to
+him with a gesture that seemed to enhance her gift a thousand-fold.  He
+had not realized what he was getting.
+
+"I am not frightened," she said.  "Yes, I will marry you."
+
+He was not sure whether--so brief was the moment!--he had held and kissed
+her cheek.  His arms were empty now, and he caught a glimpse of her
+poised on the road above him amidst the quivering, sunlit leaves, looking
+back at him over her shoulder.
+
+He followed her, but she kept nimbly ahead of him until they came out
+into the open golf course.  He tried to think, but failed.  Never in his
+orderly life had anything so precipitate happened to him.  He caught up
+with her, devoured her with his eyes, and beheld in marriage a delirium.
+
+"Honora," he said thickly, "I can't grasp it."
+
+She gave him a quick look, and a smile quivered at the corners of her
+mouth.
+
+"What are you thinking of?" he asked.
+
+"I am thinking of Mrs. Holt's expression when we tell her," said Honora.
+"But we shan't tell her yet, shall we, Howard?  We'll have it for our own
+secret a little while."
+
+The golf course being deserted, he pressed her arm.
+
+"We'll tell her whenever you like, dear," he replied.
+
+In spite of the fact that they drove Joshua's trotter to lunch--much too
+rapidly in the heat of the day, they were late.
+
+"I shall never be able to go in there and not give it away," he whispered
+to her on the stairs.
+
+"You look like the Cheshire cat in the tree," whispered Honora, laughing,
+"only more purple, and not so ghostlike."
+
+"I know I'm smiling," replied Howard, "I feel like it, but I can't help
+it.  It won't come off.  I want to blurt out the news to every one in the
+dining-room--to that little Frenchman, in particular."
+
+Honora laughed again.  Her imagination easily summoned up the tableau
+which such a proceeding would bring forth.  The incredulity, the chagrin,
+the indignation, even, in some quarters.  He conceived the household,
+with the exception of the Vicomte, precipitating themselves into his
+arms.
+
+Honora, who was cool enough herself (no doubt owing to the superior
+training which women receive in matters of deportment), observed that his
+entrance was not a triumph of dissimulation.  His colour was high, and
+his expression, indeed, a little idiotic; and he declared afterwards that
+he felt like a sandwich-man, with the news printed in red letters before
+and behind.  Honora knew that the intense improbability of the truth
+would save them, and it did.  Mrs. Holt remarked, slyly, that the game
+of golf must have hidden attractions, and regretted that she was too old
+to learn it.
+
+"We went very slowly on account of the heat," Howard declared.
+
+"I should say that you had gone very rapidly, from your face," retorted
+Mrs. Holt.  In relaxing moods she indulged in banter.
+
+Honora stepped into the breach.  She would not trust her newly acquired
+fiance to extricate himself.
+
+"We were both very much worried, Mrs. Holt," she explained, "because we
+were late for lunch once before."
+
+"I suppose I'll have to forgive you, my dear, especially with that
+colour.  I am modern enough to approve of exercise for young girls,
+and I am sure your Aunt Mary will think Silverdale has done you good
+when I send you back to her."
+
+"Oh, I'm sure she will," said Honora.
+
+In the meantime Mr. Spence was concentrating all of his attention upon a
+jellied egg.  Honora glanced at the Vicomte.  He sat very stiff, and his
+manner of twisting his mustache reminded her of an animal sharpening its
+claws.  It was at this moment that the butler handed her a telegram,
+which, with Mrs. Holt's permission, she opened and read twice before the
+meaning of it came to her.
+
+"I hope it is no bad news, Honora," said Mrs. Holt.
+
+"It's from Peter Erwin," she replied, still a little dazed.  "He's in New
+York.  And he's corning up on the five o'clock train to spend an hour
+with me."
+
+"Oh," said Susan; "I remember his picture on your bureau at Sutcliffe.
+He had such a good face.  And you told me about him."
+
+"He is like my brother," Honora explained, aware that Howard was looking
+at her.  "Only he is much older than I.  He used to wheel me up and down
+when I was a baby.  He was, an errand boy in the bank then, and Uncle Tom
+took an interest in him, and now he is a lawyer.  A very good one, I
+believe."
+
+"I have a great respect for any man who makes his own way in life," said
+Mrs. Holt.  "And since he is such an old friend, my dear, you must ask
+him to spend the night."
+
+"Oh, thank you, Mrs. Bolt," Honora answered.
+
+It was, however, with mingled feelings that she thought of Peter's
+arrival at this time.  Life, indeed, was full of strange coincidences!
+
+There was a little door that led out of the house by the billiard room,
+Honora remembered, and contrived, after luncheon, to slip away and reach
+it.  She felt that she must be alone, and if she went to her room she was
+likely to be disturbed by Susan or Mrs. Joshua--or indeed Mrs. Holt
+herself.  Honora meant to tell Susan the first of all.  She crossed the
+great lawn quickly, keeping as much as possible the trees and masses of
+shrubbery between herself and the house, and reached the forest.  With a
+really large fund of energy at her disposal, Honora had never been one to
+believe in the useless expenditure of it; nor did she feel the intense
+desire which a girl of another temperament might have had, under the same
+conditions, to keep in motion.  So she sat down on a bench within the
+borders of the wood.
+
+It was not that she wished to reflect, in the ordinary meaning of the
+word, that she had sought seclusion, but rather to give her imagination
+free play.  The enormity of the change that was to come into her life did
+not appall her in the least; but she had, in connection with it, a sense
+of unreality which, though not unpleasant, she sought unconsciously to
+dissipate.  Howard Spence, she reflected with a smile, was surely solid
+and substantial enough, and she thought of him the more tenderly for the
+possession of these attributes.  A castle founded on such a rock was not
+a castle in Spain!
+
+It did not occur to Honora that her thoughts might be more of the castle
+than of the rock: of the heaven he was to hold on his shoulders than of
+the Hercules she had chosen to hold it.
+
+She would write to her Aunt Mary and her Uncle Tom that very afternoon--
+one letter to both.  Tears came into her eyes when she thought of them,
+and of their lonely life' without her.  But they would come on to New
+York to visit her often, and they would be proud of her.  Of one thing
+she was sure--she must go home to them at once--on Tuesday.  She would
+tell Mrs. Holt to-morrow, and Susan to-night.  And, while pondering over
+the probable expression of that lady's amazement, it suddenly occurred to
+her that she must write the letter immediately, because Peter Erwin was
+coming.
+
+What would he say?  Should she tell him?  She was surprised to find that
+the idea of doing so was painful to her.  But she was aroused from these
+reflections by a step on the path, and raised her head to perceive the
+Vicomte.  His face wore an expression of triumph.
+
+"At last," he cried, "at last!" And he sat down on the bench beside her.
+Her first impulse was to rise, yet for some inexplicable reason she
+remained.
+
+"I always suspected in you the qualities of a Monsieur Lecoq," she
+remarked.  "You have an instinct for the chase."
+
+"Mon dieu?"  he said.  "I have risked a stroke of the sun to find you.
+Why should you so continually run away from me?"
+
+"To test your ingenuity, Vicomte."
+
+"And that other one--the stock-broker--you do not avoid him.  Diable, I
+am not blind, Mademoiselle.  It is plain to me at luncheon that you have
+made boil the sluggish blood of that one.  As for me--"
+
+"Your boiling-point is lower," she said, smiling.
+
+Listen, Mademoiselle," he pursued, bending towards her.  "It is not for
+my health that I stay here, as I have told you.  It is for the sight of
+you, for the sound of the music of that low voice.  It is in the hope
+that you will be a little kinder, that you will understand me a little
+better.  And to-day, when I learn that still another is on his way to see
+you, I could sit still no longer.  I do not fear that Spence,--no.  But
+this other--what is he like?"
+
+"He is the best type of American," replied Honora.  "I am sure you will
+be interested in him, and like him."
+
+The Vicomte shrugged his shoulders.
+
+"It is not in America that you will find your destiny, Mademoiselle.
+You are made to grace a salon, a court, which you will not find in this
+country.  Such a woman as you is thrown away here.  You possess
+qualities--you will pardon me--in which your countrywomen are lacking,--
+esprit, imagination, elan, the power to bind people to you.  I have read
+you as you have not read yourself.  I have seen how you have served
+yourself by this famille Holt, and how at the same time you have kept
+their friendship."
+
+"Vicomte!" she exclaimed.
+
+"Ah, do not get angry," he begged; "such gifts are rare--they are
+sublime.  They lead," he added, raising his arms, "to the heights."
+
+Honora was silent.  She was, indeed, not unmoved by his voice, into
+which there was creeping a vibrant note of passion.  She was a little
+frightened, but likewise puzzled and interested.  This was all so
+different from what she had expected of him.  What did he mean?  Was she
+indeed like that?
+
+She was aware that he was speaking again, that he was telling her of a
+chateau in France which his ancestors had owned since the days of Louis
+XII; a grey pile that stood upon a thickly wooded height,--a chateau with
+a banquet hall, where kings had dined, with a chapel where kings had
+prayed, with a flowering terrace high above a gleaming river.  It was
+there that his childhood had been passed.  And as he spoke, she listened
+with mingled feelings, picturing the pageantry of life in such a place.
+
+"I tell you this, Mademoiselle," he said, "that you may know I am not
+what you call an adventurer.  Many of these, alas! come to your country.
+And I ask you to regard with some leniency customs which must be strange
+to Americans.  When we marry in France, it is with a dot, and especially
+is it necessary amongst the families of our nobility."
+
+Honora rose, the blood mounting to her temples.
+
+"Mademoiselle," he cried, "do not misunderstand me.  I would die rather
+than hurt your feelings.  Listen, I pray.  It was to tell you frankly
+that I came to this country for that purpose,--in order that I might live
+as my ancestors have lived, with a hotel in Paris: But the chateau, grace
+a dieu, is not mortgaged, nor am I wholly impoverished.  I have soixante
+quinze mille livres de rente, which is fifteen thousand dollars a year in
+your money, and which goes much farther in France.  At the proper time,
+I will present these matters to your guardians.  I have lived, but I have
+a heart, and I love you madly.  Rather would I dwell with you in
+Provence, where I will cultivate the soil of my forefathers, than a
+palace on the Champs Elysees with another.  We can come to Paris for two
+months, at least.  For you I can throw my prospects out of the window
+with a light heart.  Honore--how sweet is your name in my language--I
+love you to despair."
+
+He seized her hand and pressed it to his lips, but she drew it gently
+away.  It seemed to her that he had made the very air quiver with
+feeling, and she let herself wonder, for a moment, what life with him
+would be.  Incredible as it seemed, he had proposed to her, a penniless
+girl!  Her own voice was not quite steady as she answered him, and her
+eyes were filled with compassion.
+
+"Vicomte," she said, "I did not know that you cared for me--that way.
+I thought--I thought you were amusing yourself."
+
+"Amusing myself!" he exclaimed bitterly.  "And you--were you amusing
+yourself?"
+
+"I--I tried to avoid you," she replied, in a low voice.
+
+"I am engaged."
+
+"Engaged!"  He sprang to his feet.  "Engaged!  Ah, no, I will not believe
+it.  You were engaged when you came here?"
+
+She was no little alarmed by the violence which he threw into his words.
+At the same time, she was indignant.  And yet a mischievous sprite within
+her led her on to tell him the truth.
+
+"No, I am going to marry Mr. Howard Spence, although I do not wish it
+announced."
+
+For a moment he stood motionless, speechless, staring at her, and then he
+seemed to sway a little and to choke.
+
+"No, no," he cried, "it cannot be!  My ears have deceived me.  I am not
+sane.  You are going to marry him--?  Ah, you have sold yourself."
+
+"Monsieur de Toqueville," she said, "you forget yourself.  Mr. Spence is
+an honourable man, and I love him."
+
+The Vicomte appeared to choke again.  And then, suddenly, he became
+himself, although his voice was by no means natural.  His elaborate and
+ironic bow she remembered for many years.
+
+"Pardon, Mademoiselle," he said, "and adieu.  You will be good enough to
+convey my congratulations to Mr. Spence."
+
+With a kind of military "about face" he turned and left her abruptly,
+and she watched him as he hurried across the lawn until he had
+disappeared behind the trees near the house.  When she sat down on
+the bench again, she found that she was trembling a little.  Was the
+unexpected to occur to her from now on?  Was it true, as the Vicomte had
+said, that she was destined to be loved amidst the play of drama?
+
+She felt sorry for him because he had loved her enough to fling to the
+winds his chances of wealth for her sake--a sufficient measure of the
+feelings of one of his nationality and caste.  And she permitted, for an
+instant, her mind to linger on the supposition that Howard Spence had
+never come into her life; might she not, when the Vicomte had made his
+unexpected and generous avowal, have accepted him?  She thought of the
+romances of her childish days, written at fever heat, in which ladies
+with titles moved around and gave commands and rebuked lovers who slipped
+in through wicket gates.  And to think that she might have been a
+Vicomtesse and have lived in a castle!
+
+A poor Vicomtesse, it is true.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI
+
+WHAT MIGHT HAVE BEEN
+
+Honora sat still upon the bench.  After an indefinite period she saw
+through the trees a vehicle on the driveway, and in it a single
+passenger.  And suddenly it occurred to her that the passenger must be
+Peter, for Mrs. Holt had announced her intention of sending for him.  She
+arose and approached the house, not without a sense of agitation.
+
+She halted a moment at a little distance from the porch, where he was
+talking with Howard Spence and Joshua, and the fact that he was an
+unchanged Peter came to her with a shock of surprise.  So much, in less
+than a year, had happened to Honora!  And the sight of him, and the sound
+of his voice, brought back with a rush memories of a forgotten past.
+How long it seemed since she had lived in St. Louis!
+
+Yes, he was the same Peter, but her absence from him had served to
+sharpen her sense of certain characteristics.  He was lounging in his
+chair with his long legs crossed, with one hand m his pocket, and talking
+to these men as though he had known them always.  There was a quality
+about him which had never struck her before, and which eluded exact
+definition.  It had never occurred to her, until now, when she saw him
+out of the element with which she had always associated him, that Peter
+Erwin had a personality.  That personality was a mixture of simplicity
+and self-respect and--common sense.  And as Honora listened to his
+cheerful voice, she perceived that he had the gift of expressing himself
+clearly and forcibly and withal modestly; nor did it escape her that the
+other two men were listening with a certain deference.  In her sensitive
+state she tried to evade the contrast thus suddenly presented to her
+between Peter and the man she had promised, that very morning, to marry.
+
+Howard Spence was seated on the table, smoking a cigarette.  Never, it
+seemed, had he more distinctly typified to her Prosperity.  An attribute
+which she had admired in him, of strife without the appearance of strife,
+lost something of its value.  To look at Peter was to wonder whether
+there could be such a thing as a well-groomed combatant; and until to-day
+she had never thought of Peter as a combatant.  The sight of his lean
+face summoned, all undesired, the vague vision of an ideal, and perhaps
+it was this that caused her voice to falter a little as she came forward
+and called his name.  He rose precipitately.
+
+"What a surprise, Peter!" she said, as she took his hand.  "How do you
+happen to be in the East?"
+
+"An errand boy," he replied.  "Somebody had to come, so they chose me.
+Incidentally," he added, smiling down at her, "it is a part of my
+education."
+
+"We thought you were lost," said Howard Spence, significantly.
+
+"Oh, no," she answered lightly, evading his look.  "I was on the bench at
+the edge of the wood."  She turned again to Peter.  "How good of you to
+come up and see me!"
+
+"I couldn't have resisted that," he declared, "if it were only for an
+hour."
+
+"I've been trying to persuade him to stay a while with us," Joshua put in
+with unusual graciousness.  "My mother will be disappointed not to see
+you."
+
+"There is nothing I should like better, Mr. Holt," said Peter, simply,
+gazing off across the lawn.  "Unfortunately I have to leave for the West
+to-night."
+
+"Before you go," said Honora, "you must see this wonderful place.  Come,
+we'll begin with the garden."
+
+She had a desire now to take him away by himself, something she had
+wished, an hour ago, to avoid.
+
+"Wouldn't you like a runabout?"  suggested Joshua, hospitably.
+
+Honora thanked him.
+
+"I'm sure Mr. Erwin would rather walk," she replied.
+
+"Come, Peter, you must tell me all the news of home."
+
+Spence accepted his dismissal with a fairly good grace, and gave no
+evidence of jealousy.  He put his hand on Peter's shoulder.
+
+"If you're ever in New York, Erwin," said he, "look me up Dallam and
+Spence.  We're members of the Exchange, so you won't have any trouble in
+finding us.  I'd like to talk to you sometime about the West."
+
+Peter thanked him.
+
+For a little while, as they went down the driveway side by side, he was
+meditatively silent.  She wondered what he thought of Howard Spence,
+until suddenly she remembered that her secret was still her own, that
+Peter had as yet no particular reason to single out Mr. Spence for
+especial consideration.  She could not, however, resist saying,
+"New Yorkers are like that."
+
+"Like what?" he asked.
+
+She coloured.
+
+"Like--Mr. Spence.  A little--self-assertive, sure of themselves."  She
+strove to keep out of her voice any suspicion of the agitation which was
+the result of the events of an extraordinary day, not yet ended.  She
+knew that it would have been wiser not to have mentioned Howard; but
+Peter's silence, somehow, had impelled her to speak.  "He has made quite
+an unusual success for so young a man."
+
+Peter looked at her and shook his head.
+
+"New York--success!  What is to become of poor old St. Louis?" he
+inquired.
+
+"Oh, I'm going back next week," Honora cried.  "I wish I were going with
+you."
+
+"And leave all this," he said incredulously, "for trolley rides and
+Forest Park and--and me?"
+
+He stopped in the garden path and looked upon the picture she made
+standing in the sunlight against the blazing borders, her wide hat
+casting a shadow on her face.  And the smile which she had known so well
+since childhood, indulgent, quizzical, with a touch of sadness, was in
+his eyes.  She was conscious of a slight resentment.  Was there, in fact,
+no change in her as the result of the events of those momentous ten
+months since she had seen him?  And rather than a tolerance in which
+there was neither antagonism nor envy, she would have preferred from
+Peter an open disapproval of luxury, of the standards which he implied
+were hers.  She felt that she had stepped into another world, but he
+refused to be dazzled by it.  He insisted upon treating her as the same
+Honora.
+
+"How did you leave Uncle Tom and Aunt Mary?" she asked.
+
+They were counting the days, he said, until she should return, but they
+did not wish to curtail her visit.  They did not expect her next week, he
+knew.
+
+Honora coloured again.
+
+"I feel--that I ought to go to them," she said.
+
+He glanced at her as though her determination to leave Silverdale so soon
+surprised him.
+
+"They will be very happy to see you, Honora," he said.  "They have been
+very lonesome."
+
+She softened.  Some unaccountable impulse prompted her to ask:
+"And you?  Have you missed me--a little?"
+
+He did not answer, and she saw that he was profoundly affected.  She laid
+a hand upon his arm.
+
+"Oh, Peter, I didn't mean that," she cried.  "I know you have.  And I
+have missed you--terribly.  It seems so strange seeing you here," she
+went on hurriedly.  "There are so many' things I want to show you.  Tell
+me how it happened hat you came on to New York."
+
+"Somebody in the firm had to come," he said.
+
+"In the firm!" she repeated.  She did not grasp the full meaning of this
+change in his status, but she remembered that Uncle Tom had predicted it
+one day, and that it was an honour.  "I never knew any one so secretive
+about their own affairs!  Why didn't you write me you had been admitted
+to the firm?  So you are a partner of Judge Brice."
+
+"Brice, Graves, and Erwin," said Peter; "it sounds very grand, doesn't
+it?  I can't get used to it myself."
+
+"And what made you call yourself an errand boy?"  she exclaimed
+reproachfully.  "When I go back to the house I intend to tell Joshua
+Holt and--and Mr. Spence that you are a great lawyer."
+
+Peter laughed.
+
+"You'd better wait a few years before you say that," said he.
+
+He took an interest in everything he saw, in Mr. Holt's flowers, in
+Joshua's cow barn, which they traversed, and declared, if he were ever
+rich enough, he would live in the country.  They walked around the pond,
+--fringed now with yellow water-lilies on their floating green pads,--
+through the woods, and when the shadows were lengthening came out at the
+little summer-house over the valley of Silver Brook--the scene of that
+first memorable encounter with the Vicomte.  At the sight of it the
+episode, and much else of recent happening, rushed back into Honora's
+mind, and she realized with suddenness that she had, in his
+companionship, unconsciously been led far afield and in pleasant
+places.  Comparisons seemed inevitable.
+
+She watched him with an unwonted tugging at her heart as he stood for a
+long time by the edge of the railing, gazing over the tree-tops of the
+valley towards the distant hazy hills.  Nor did she understand what it
+was in him that now, on this day of days when she had definitely cast the
+die of life, when she had chosen her path, aroused this strange emotion.
+Why had she never felt it before?  She had thought his face homely--now
+it seemed to shine with a transfiguring light.  She recalled, with a
+pang, that she had criticised his clothes: to-day they seemed the
+expression of the man himself.  Incredible is the range of human emotion!
+She felt a longing to throw herself into his arms, and to weep there.
+
+He turned at length from the view.
+
+"How wonderful!" he said.
+
+"I didn't know--you cared for nature so much, Peter."
+
+He looked at her strangely and put out his hand and drew her,
+unresisting, to the bench beside him.
+
+"Are you in trouble, Honora?" he asked.
+
+"Oh, no," she cried, "oh, no, I am--very happy."
+
+"You may have thought it odd that I should have come here without knowing
+Mrs. Holt," he said gravely, "particularly when you were going home so
+soon.  I do not know myself why I came.  I am a matter-of-fact person,
+but I acted on an impulse."
+
+"An impulse!" she faltered, avoiding the troubled, searching look in his
+eyes.
+
+"Yes," he said, "an impulse.  I can call it by no other name.  I should
+have taken a train that leaves New York at noon; but I had a feeling this
+morning, which seemed almost like a presentiment, that I might be of some
+use to you."
+
+"This morning?" She felt herself trembling, and she scarcely recognized
+Peter with such words on his lips.  "I am happy--indeed I am.  Only--I am
+overwrought--seeing you again--and you made me think of home."
+
+"It was no doubt very foolish of me," he declared.  "And if my coming has
+upset you--"
+
+"Oh, no," she cried.  "Please don't think so.  It has given me a sense
+of--of security.  That you were ready to help me if--if I needed you."
+
+"You should always have known that," he replied.  He rose and stood
+gazing off down the valley once more, and she watched him with her heart
+beating, with a sense of an impending crisis which she seemed powerless
+to stave off.  And presently he turned to her, "Honora, I have loved you
+for many years," he said.  "You were too young for me to speak of it.
+I did not intend to speak of it when I came here to-day.  For many years
+I have hoped that some day you might be my wife.  My one fear has been
+that I might lose you.  Perhaps--perhaps it has been a dream.  But I am
+willing to wait, should you wish to see more of the world.  You are young
+yet, and I am offering myself for all time.  There is no other woman for
+me, and never can be."
+
+He paused and smiled down at her.  But she did not speak.  She could not.
+
+"I know," he went on, "that you are ambitious.  And with your gifts
+I do not blame you.  I cannot offer you great wealth, but I say with
+confidence that I can offer you something better, something surer.
+I can take care of you and protect you, and I will devote my life
+to your happiness.  Will you marry me?"
+
+Her eyes were sparkling with tears,--tears, he remembered afterwards,
+that were like blue diamonds.
+
+"Oh, Peter," she cried, "I wish I could!  I have always--wished that I
+could.  I can't."
+
+"You can't?"
+
+She shook her head.
+
+"I--I have told no one yet--not even Aunt Mary.  I am going to marry Mr.
+Spence."
+
+For a long time he was silent, and she did not dare to look at the
+suffering in his face.
+
+"Honora," he said at last, "my most earnest wish in life will be for your
+happiness.  And whatever may, come to you I hope that you will remember
+that I am your friend, to be counted on.  And that I shall not change.
+Will you remember that?"
+
+"Yes," she whispered.  She looked at him now, and through the veil of her
+tears she seemed to see his soul shining in his eyes.  The tones of a
+distant church bell were borne to them on the valley breeze.
+
+Peter glanced at his watch.
+
+"I am afraid," he said, "that I haven't time to go back to the house--my
+train goes at seven.  Can I get down to the village through the valley?"
+
+Honora pointed out the road, faintly perceptible through the trees
+beneath them.
+
+"And you will apologize for my departure to Mrs. Holt?"
+
+She nodded.  He took her hand, pressed it, and was gone.  And presently,
+in a little clearing far below, he turned and waved his hat at her
+bravely.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII
+
+WHICH CONTAINS A SURPRISE FOR MRS. HOLT
+
+How long she sat gazing with unseeing eyes down the valley Honora did not
+know.  Distant mutterings of thunder aroused her; the evening sky had
+darkened, and angry-looking clouds of purple were gathering over the
+hills.  She rose and hurried homeward.  She had thought to enter by the
+billiard-room door, and so gain her own chamber without encountering the
+household; but she had reckoned without her hostess.  Beyond the billiard
+room, in the little entry filled with potted plants, she came face to
+face with that lady, who was inciting a footman to further efforts in his
+attempt to close a recalcitrant skylight.  Honora proved of more
+interest, and Mrs. Holt abandoned the skylight.
+
+"Why, my dear," she said, "where have you been all afternoon?"
+
+"I--I have been walking with Mr. Erwin, Mrs. Holt.  I have been showing
+him Silverdale."
+
+"And where is he?  It seems to me I invited him to stay all night, and
+Joshua tells me he extended the invitation."
+
+"We were in the little summer-house, and suddenly he discovered that it
+was late and he had to catch the seven o'clock train," faltered Honora,
+somewhat disconnectedly.  "Otherwise he would have come to you himself
+and told you--how much he regretted not staying.  He has to go to St.
+Louis to-night."
+
+"Well," said Mrs. Holt, "this is an afternoon of surprises.  The Vicomte
+has gone off, too, without even waiting to say good-by."
+
+"The Vicomte!" exclaimed Honora.
+
+"Didn't you see him, either, before he left?" inquired Mrs. Holt;
+"I thought perhaps you might be able to give me some further explanation
+of it."
+
+"I?" exclaimed Honora.  She felt ready to sink through the floor, and
+Mrs. Holt's delft-blue eyes haunted her afterwards like a nightmare.
+
+"Didn't you see him, my dear?  Didn't he tell you anything?"
+
+"He--he didn't say he was going away."
+
+"Did he seem disturbed about anything?"  Mrs. Holt insisted.
+
+"Now I think of it, he did seem a little disturbed."
+
+"To save my life," said Mrs. Holt, "I can't understand it.  He left a
+note for me saying that he had received a telegram, and that he had to go
+at once.  I was at a meeting of my charity board.  It seems a very
+strange proceeding for such an agreeable and polite man as the Vicomte,
+although he had his drawbacks, as all Continentals have.  And at times
+I thought he was grave and moody,--didn't you?"
+
+"Oh, yes, he was moody," Honora agreed eagerly.
+
+"You noticed it, too," said Mrs. Holt.  "But he was a charming man, and
+so interested in America and in the work we are doing.  But I can't
+understand about the telegram.  I had Carroll inquire of every servant
+in the house, and there is no knowledge of a telegram having come up from
+the village this afternoon."
+
+"Perhaps the Vicomte might have met the messenger in the grounds,"
+hazarded Honora.
+
+At this point their attention was distracted by a noise that bore a
+striking resemblance to a suppressed laugh.  The footman on the step-
+ladder began to rattle the skylight vigorously.
+
+"What on earth is the matter with you, Woods?"  said Mrs. Holt.
+
+"It must have been some dust off the skylight, Madam, that got into my
+throat," he stammered, the colour of a geranium.
+
+"Nonsense," said Mrs. Holt, "there is no dust on the skylight."
+
+"It may be I swallowed the wrong way, looking up like, as I was, Madam,"
+he ventured, rubbing the frame and looking at his finger to prove his
+former theory.
+
+"You are very stupid not to be able to close it," she declared; "in a few
+minutes the place will be flooded.  Tell Carroll to come and do it."
+
+Honora suffered herself to be led limply through the library and up the
+stairs into Mrs. Holt's own boudoir, where a maid was closing the windows
+against the first great drops of the storm, which the wind was pelting
+against them.  She drew the shades deftly, lighted the gas, and retired.
+Honora sank down in one of the upholstered light blue satin chairs and
+gazed at the shining brass of the coal grate set in the marble mantel,
+above which hung an engraving of Sir Joshua Reynolds' cherubs.  She had
+an instinct that the climax of the drama was at hand.
+
+Mrs. Holt sat down in the chair opposite.
+
+"My dear," she began, "I told you the other day what an unexpected and
+welcome comfort and help you have been to me.  You evidently inherit"
+(Mrs. Holt coughed slightly) "the art of entertaining and pleasing, and
+I need not warn you, my dear, against the dangers of such a gift.  Your
+aunt has evidently brought you up with strictness and religious care.
+You have been very fortunate."
+
+"Indeed I have, Mrs. Holt," echoed Honora, in bewilderment.
+
+"And Susan," continued Mrs. Holt, "useful and willing as she is, does not
+possess your gift of taking people off my hands and entertaining them."
+
+Honora could think of no reply to this.  Her eyes--to which no one could
+be indifferent--were riveted on the face of her hostess, and how was the
+good lady to guess that her brain was reeling?
+
+I was about to say, my dear, that I expect to have a great deal of--well,
+of rather difficult company this summer.  Next week, for instance, some
+prominent women in the Working Girls' Relief Society are coming, and on
+July the twenty-third I give a garden party for the delegates to the
+Charity Conference in New York.  The Japanese Minister has promised to
+pay me a visit, and Sir Rupert Grant, who built those remarkable
+tuberculosis homes in England, you know, is arriving in August with his
+family.  Then there are some foreign artists."
+
+"Oh, Mrs. Holt," exclaimed Honora; "how many interesting people you see!"
+
+"Exactly, my dear.  And I thought that, in addition to the fact that I
+have grown very fond of you, you would be very useful to me here, and
+that a summer with me might not be without its advantages.  As your aunt
+will have you until you are married, which, I may say, without denying
+your attractions, is likely to be for some time, I intend to write to her
+to-night--with your consent--and ask her to allow you to remain with me
+all summer."
+
+Honora sat transfixed, staring painfully at the big pendant ear-rings.
+
+"It is so kind of you, Mrs. Holt--"she faltered.
+
+"I can realize, my dear, that you would wish to get back to your aunt.
+The feeling does you infinite credit.  But, on the other hand, besides
+the advantages which would accrue to you, it might, to put the matter
+delicately, be of a little benefit to your relations, who will have to
+think of your future."
+
+"Indeed, it is good of you, but I must go back, Mrs. Holt."
+
+"Of course," said Mrs. Holt, with a touch of dignity--for ere now people
+had left Silverdale before she wished them to--"of course, if you do not
+care to stay, that is quite another thing."
+
+"Oh, Mrs. Holt, don't say that!" cried Honora, her face burning;
+"I cannot thank you enough for the pleasure you have given me.  If--if
+things were different, I would stay with you gladly, although I should
+miss my family.  But now,--now I feel that I must be with them.  I--I am
+engaged to be married."
+
+Honora still remembers the blank expression which appeared on the
+countenance of her hostess when she spoke these words.  Mrs. Holt's
+cheeks twitched, her ear-rings quivered, and her bosom heaved-once.
+
+"Engaged to be married!" she gasped.
+
+"Yes," replied our heroine, humbly, "I was going to tell you--to-morrow."
+
+"I suppose," said Mrs. Holt, after a silence, "it is to the young man who
+was here this afternoon, and whom I did not see.  It accounts for his
+precipitate departure.  But I must say, Honora, since frankness is one of
+my faults, that I feel it my duty to write to your aunt and disclaim all
+responsibility."
+
+"It is not to Mr. Erwin," said Honora, meekly; "it is--it is to Mr.
+Spence."
+
+Mrs. Holt seemed to find difficulty in speaking, Her former symptoms,
+which Honora had come to recognize as indicative of agitation, returned
+with alarming intensity.  And when at length her voice made itself heard,
+it was scarcely recognizable.
+
+"You are engaged--to--Howard Spence?"
+
+"Oh, Mrs. Holt," exclaimed Honora, "it was as great a surprise to me--
+believe me--as it is to you."
+
+But even the knowledge that they shared a common amazement did not
+appear, at once, to assuage Mrs. Holt's emotions.
+
+"Do you love him?"  she demanded abruptly.
+
+Whereupon Honora burst into tears.
+
+"Oh, Mrs. Holt," she sobbed, "how can you ask?"
+
+From this time on the course of events was not precisely logical.  Mrs.
+Holt, setting in abeyance any ideas she may have had about the affair,
+took Honora in her arms, and against that ample bosom was sobbed out the
+pent-up excitement and emotion of an extraordinary day.
+
+"There, there, my dear," said Mrs. Holt, stroking the dark hair,
+"I should not have asked you that-forgive me."  And the worthy lady,
+quivering with sympathy now, remembered the time of her own engagement
+to Joshua.  And the fact that the circumstances of that event differed
+somewhat from those of the present--in regularity, at least, increased
+rather than detracted from Mrs. Holt's sudden access of tenderness.  The
+perplexing questions as to the probable result of such a marriage were
+swept away by a flood of feeling.  "There, there, my dear, I did not mean
+to be harsh.  What you told me was such a shock--such a surprise, and
+marriage is such a grave and sacred thing."
+
+"I know it," sobbed Honora.
+
+"And you are very young."
+
+"Yes, Mrs. Holt."
+
+"And it happened in my house."
+
+"No," said Honora, "it happened--near the golf course."
+
+Mrs. Holt smiled, and wiped her eyes.
+
+"I mean, my dear, that I shall always feel responsible for bringing you
+together---for your future happiness.  That is a great deal.  I could
+have wished that you both had taken longer to reflect, but I hope with
+all my heart that you will be happy."
+
+Honora lifted up a tear-stained face.
+
+"He said it was because I was going away that--that he spoke," she said.
+"Oh, Mrs. Holt, I knew that you would be kind about it."
+
+"Of course I am kind about it, my dear," said Mrs. Holt.  "As I told you,
+I have grown to have an affection for you.  I feel a little as though you
+belonged to me.  And after this--this event, I expect to see a great deal
+of you.  Howard Spence's mother was a very dear friend of mine.  I was
+one of the first who knew her when she came to New York, from Troy, a
+widow, to educate her son.  She was a very fine and a very courageous
+woman."  Mrs. Holt paused a moment.  "She hoped that Howard would be a
+lawyer."
+
+"A lawyer!" Honora repeated.
+
+"I lost sight of him for several years," continued Mrs. Holt, "but before
+I invited him here I made some inquiries about him from friends of mine
+in the financial world.  I find that he is successful for so young a man,
+and well thought of.  I have no doubt he will make a good husband, my
+dear, although I could wish he were not on the Stock Exchange.  And I
+hope you will make him happy."
+
+Whereupon the good lady kissed Honora, and dismissed her to dress for
+dinner.
+
+"I shall write to your aunt at once," she said.
+
+                    ........................
+
+Requited love, unsettled condition that it is supposed to bring, did not
+interfere with Howard Spence's appetite at dinner.  His spirits, as
+usual, were of the best, and from time to time Honora was aware of his
+glance.  Then she lowered her eyes.  She sat as in a dream; and, try as
+she might, her thoughts would not range themselves.  She seemed to see
+him but dimly, to hear what he said faintly; and it conveyed nothing to
+her mind.
+
+This man was to be her husband!  Over and over she repeated it to
+herself.  His name was Howard Spence, and he was on the highroad to
+riches and success, and she was to live in New York.  Ten days before he
+had not existed for her.  She could not bring herself to believe that he
+existed now.  Did she love him?  How could she love him, when she did not
+realize him?  One thing she knew, that she had loved him that morning.
+
+The fetters of her past life were broken, and this she would not realize.
+She had opened the door of the cage for what?  These were the fragments
+of thoughts that drifted through her mind like tattered clouds across an
+empty sky after a storm.  Peter Erwin appeared to her more than once, and
+he was strangely real.  But he belonged to the past.  Course succeeded
+course, and she talked subconsciously to Mr. Holt and Joshua--such is the
+result of feminine training.
+
+After dinner she stood on the porch.  The rain had ceased, a cool damp
+breeze shook the drops from the leaves, and the stars were shining.
+Presently, at the sound of a step behind her, she started.  He was
+standing at her shoulder.
+
+"Honora!" he said.
+
+She did not move.
+
+"Honora, I haven't seen you--alone--since morning.  It seems like a
+thousand years.  Honora?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Did you mean it?
+
+"Did I mean what?"
+
+"When you said you'd marry me."  His voice trembled a little.  "I've been
+thinking of nothing but you all day.  You're not--sorry?  You haven't
+changed your mind?"
+
+She shook her head.
+
+"At dinner when you wouldn't look at me, and this afternoon--"
+
+"No, I'm not sorry," she said, cutting him short.  "I'm not sorry."
+
+He put his arm about her with an air that was almost apologetic.  And,
+seeing that she did not resist, he drew her to him and kissed her.
+Suddenly, unaccountably to her, she clung to him.
+
+"You love me!" he exclaimed.
+
+"Yes," she whispered, "but I am tired.  I--I am going upstairs, Howard.
+I am tired."
+
+He kissed her again.
+
+"I can't believe it!" he said.  "I'll make you a queen.  And we'll be
+married in the autumn, Honora."  He nodded boyishly towards the open
+windows of the library.  "Shall I tell them?" he asked.  "I feel like
+shouting it.  I can't hold on much longer.  I wonder what the old lady
+will say!"
+
+Honora disengaged herself from his arms and fled to the screen door.  As
+she opened it, she turned and smiled back at him.
+
+"Mrs. Holt knows already," she said.
+
+And catching her skirt, she flew quickly up the stairs.
+
+
+
+
+ETEXT EDITOR'S BOOKMARKS:
+
+Little better than a gambling place (Stock Exchange)
+Often in real danger at the moment when they feel most secure
+Weak coffee and the Protestant religion seemed inseparable
+
+
+
+
+
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