erself in the new surroundings before he put it all
behind him. This time he found a bit of shade and a fence rail for the
too friendly nag, and entering the Jenks-Smith grounds afoot, followed
the crowd that was gathering.

The rose garden of five years' well-trained growth was extremely
beautiful, while the pergola that separated it from the formal garden of
the fountain, and at the same time served as a gateway to it, was
utilized as the booth where roses and fanciful boxes of giant
strawberries were to be sold.

Bradford, standing at a little distance, under an archway, scanned the
faces of the smart married women who bustled about canvassing, and the
young girls who carelessly gathered the sumptuous roses into bouquets for
the buyers, making a great fuss over the thorns as they did so. Then one
tall, white-clad figure arrested his attention. It was Sylvia. She
handled the flowers lovingly, and was bestowing patient attention upon a
country woman, to whom these pampered roses were a revelation, and who
wished a bouquet made up of samples, one of each variety, and not a mass
all of a colour like the bunches that were arranged in the great baskets.

As Sylvia held the bouquet up for the woman's approval, adding a bud
here and there, pausing to breathe its fragrance herself before handing
it to the purchaser, Horace's courage came back. She was plainly not a
part of the vortex that surrounded her. Circumstances at present seemed
to stand between. He could not even venture a guess if she ever gave him
other than a friendly thought; but a feeling came over him as he stood in
the deep shade, that some day she might be lonely and need steadfast
friendship, and then the opportunity to serve her would give him the
right to question.

Now thoroughly master of himself, he went toward her, and was rewarded by
a greeting of unfeigned pleasure, a few moments of general talk, and a
big bunch of roses for his mother.

"No, you shall not buy these. I am sending them to your mother with my
love, to beg pardon for Miss Lavinia and myself, for we've been trying to
go to Pine Ridge all the week; but this affair has kept me spinning like
a top, and when I do stop I expect to fall over with weariness. I was
_so_ sorry about Rockcliffe Commencement. Some day, perhaps, mamma will
have finished bringing me out, and then I can crawl in again where it is
quiet, and live. Ah, you went to the house and saw her, and she said we
were going aw