n, who was
soft and drowsy, with eyes that reminded one of a ruminating heifer's.

"I assure you, I have been positively longing to have you gratify my
curiosity," declared Miss Preston. "You know you do such dear, eccentric
things that we couldn't exist without you--at least I couldn't because I
should perish of boredom. No, you shan't escape just yet, so stop
looking at that beautiful Mrs. Galt. You must tell me first if it is
really true that you once carried a woman out of a burning building in
your right hand. It is so delightful to be strong, don't you think?"

The governor regarded her gravely. Before her animated chatter his
gravity became almost grotesque. "The only burning building I was ever
in was a burning smoke-house," he returned quietly. "I never carried a
woman out of anything in either hand."

There was a bored expression in his eyes, and he glanced beyond the
group to where Juliet stood surrounded.

"Pardon me," he said in a moment, and passed on.

In the crowd about him, where pretty women were as plentiful as pinks in
a garden bed, he moved awkwardly, with the hesitating steps of a man
who is uncertain of his pathway. His powerful frame and the splendid
vigour in his daring strides seemed out of place amid a profusion of
exotics that trembled as he passed. His appearance suggested the
battlegrounds of nature--high places, or the breadth of the open fields;
at the plough he would have been grandly picturesque, in the centre of a
throng of graceful men and women he loomed merely large and ill at ease.
Above his evening clothes his face showed rough, rather than refined,
and his stubborn jaw gave an impression of heaviness.

As he reached Juliet she uttered an exclamation of pleasure and held out
her hand. "Emma, you have heard of my Sunday-school scholar," she said
to a girl beside her. "My prize scholar, I mean. Sally, have you seen
the governor?"

Emma Carr, a pink-and-white girl who bore herself with the air of an
acknowledged belle, bowed, with a platitude that sounded original on her
lovely lips, and Sally Bassett turned with a hearty handshake.

"And he is our Nick Burr!" she exclaimed. "Tom, where are you?"

She spoke with an impulsive flutter which he had remembered as the
sparkle of mere girlish liveliness. Now he saw that it had degenerated
into a restlessness that appeared to result from a continued waste of
nervous energy. She looked older than Juliet, though she was in fact
much