ere night calls from birds
and insects, but beyond these sounds the girl's heart listening,
heard--

Between where the road emerged from the hummock and the gate to Nancy
was a stretch of old corduroy road over a marshy strip. Elsewhere a
horse's hoofs sank into sand. Willy Leroy would ride out, if he came,
probably on Mr. Jonas's mare.

The girl sat, all else abeyant, listening. She heard the first
hoof-beat, the first clattering thud on wood. Her hand slipped from
the Captain's; she sat still.

She sat stiller even as Willy rode in and called halloo to the house,
while his mother and Molly, and even Celeste, came out. She hardly
moved as he touched her hand and went past her with the others into
the house, and left her there.

She did not know how long it was they came and went, Pete with the
horse to the stable, Mrs. Leroy getting the boy his supper. The talk
of the father and mother and son rose and fell within.

She heard them closing shutters, hunting lamps, and moving up the
steps. But he came out and sat on the step near her, and yet far away.

They did not look toward each other. And yet he knew how she looked,
fair, still, perhaps a little cold; and she knew how he looked, tanned
and bronzed, yet good to see in his hunting clothes.

Shy as two young, wild things they sat, and wordless.

Presently he spoke, looking away from her.

"Mother wrote me you were going. I came up to say good-by. They're to
wait for me in camp."

After that they both were silent, how long neither knew. Then the girl
stood up.

"It must be late," she said.

"Oh," he said, "no--"

"Yes," she said; "I think you'll find it is. Good-night."

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

In her packing Alexina had left out a muslin dress for Mrs. Leroy's
evening. Going up from the hurried supper to dress, she glanced at it,
then drew forth a box from a trunk and pulled the contents therefrom.
The dress that came forth shimmered and gleamed and floated; it was a
thing that must have enfolded any woman to beautiful lines, and have
made any throat, any head, lift. It was a purchase she had been in a
way ashamed of, tempted to it in a moment of weakness, urged on by
Molly.

Now she laid it forth and dressed with care, grave as some young
priestess. Molly watched her curiously. Even at the hotel there had
been occasions for only simple clothes.

But the girl even brought forth some leather cases. Generally it was
her little pose that she did