on her, she decided that she was making too much
of it all. The affair with the little school-teacher might not be in the
least serious. Men had their fancies, and Dicky was not a fool.

She knew her power over him, and her charm. His little boyhood had been
heavy with sorrow and soberness; she had lightened it by her gaiety and
good nature. Eve had taken her orphaned state philosophically. Her
parents had died before she knew them. Her Aunt Maude was rich and gave
her everything; she was queen of her small domain. Richard, on the other
hand, had been early oppressed by anxieties--his care for his strong
little mother, his real affection for his weak father, culminating in
the tragedy which had come during his college days. In all the years Eve
had been his good comrade and companion. She had cheered him, commanded
him, loved him.

And he had loved her. He had never analyzed the quality of his love. She
was his good friend, his sister. If he had ever thought of her as his
sweetheart or as his wife, it had always been with the feeling that Eve
had too much money. No man had a right to live on his wife's bounty.

He had a genuinely happy day with her. He showed her the charming old
house which she had never seen. He showed her the schoolhouse, still
closed on account of the epidemic. He showed her the ancient ballroom
built out in a separate wing.

"A little money would make it lovely, Richard."

"It is lovely without the money."

Winifred Ames spoke earnestly from the window where, with her husband's
arm about her, she was observing the sunset. "Some day Tony and I are
going to have a house like this--and then we'll be happy."

"Aren't you happy now?" her husband demanded.

"Yes. But not on my own plan, as it were." Then softly so that no one
else could hear, "I want just you, Tony--and all the rest of the world
away."

"Dear Heart----" He dared not say more, for Pip's envious eyes were upon
them.

"When I marry you, Eve, may I hold your hand in public?"

"You may--when I marry you."

"Good. Whenever I lose faith in the bliss of matrimony, I have only to
look at Win and Tony to be cheered and sustained by their example."

Nancy, playing the little lovely hostess, agreed. "If they weren't so
new-fashioned in every way I should call them an old-fashioned couple."

"Love is never out of fashion, Mrs. Nancy," said Eve; "is it, Dicky Boy?"

"Ask Pip."

"Love," said Philip solemnly, "is the newest thing in t