no jewels. By other ways which he felt but
could not analyze she expressed some portentous shift of mood. He could
not define why, but her step scared him, so measured and resolute it
seemed.

She called to her mother and Miss Franklin and then asked, "Has dinner
been announced?"

Her tone was quiet and natural, and Mart was relieved. He answered with
attempt at jocularity, "Lucius is this minute winkin' at me over the
soup-tureen."

As they took seats at the table Mrs. Gilman exclaimed, "Why, dearie,
where did you dig up that old waist?"

"Will it do to visit Sibley in?"

"No indeed! I should say not. When you go back there I want you to wear
the best you've got. They'll consider it an insult if you don't."

A faint smile lighted Bertha's pale face. "I don't think they'll take it
so hard as all that."

"Are you goin' to Sibley?" asked Mart, an anxious tone in his voice.

"I thought of it. Mother is going over to-night, and I rather guess I'll
run over with her. I've never been back, you see, since that night."

There was something ominous in her restraint, in her abstraction of
glance, and especially in her lack of appetite. She took little account
of her guests and seemed profoundly engaged upon some inward
calculation. The beautifully spread table, which would have thrilled her
a few short weeks ago, was powerless to even hold her gaze, and it was
Lucius (deft and watchful) who brought the meal to a successful
conclusion--for the mother was awed and helpless in the presence of the
queenly daughter whom wealth had translated into something almost too
high and shining for her to lay hand upon.

Miss Franklin did her best, but she was not a person of light and
dancing intellectual feet, and she had never understood Haney, anyhow.
Altogether it was a dismal and difficult half-hour.

When the coffee came on Bertha rose abruptly, saying, "Come out into the
garden, Mart, I've got something to say to you."

He obeyed with a sense of being called to account, and as they walked
slowly across the grass, which the light of a vivid orange sunset had
made transcendently green, he glanced to the west with foreboding that
this was the last time he should look upon the kingly peak at sunset
time. A flaming helmet of cloud shone upon the chief, and all the lesser
heights were a deep, purple bank out of which each serrate summit rose
without perspective, sharply set against the other like a monstrous
silhouette of cardbo