g the stars. Yes, I knew, that afternoon in
the cedar wood--but not for happiness itself would I have robbed you of
that faith, that confidence--"

She leaned forward in the great chair, her hands clasped upon its arms,
her dark eyes wide upon the night without the window. "I sent for you
because I wished you to tell me all. I wanted truth as I wanted air! I
want it now. That day we met in the cedar wood--you and Uncle Edward
talked together." She drew a difficult breath. "It was then that
they--Uncle Dick and Uncle Edward--began to treat me as though--as
though I had never left home! It was then--"

"They feared," said Cary gently, "for your happiness."

"I returned to Roselands, and in three days we were to travel across the
mountains. Then at sunset, underneath the beech tree"--She sat for a
moment perfectly still, then turned in her chair and spoke in a clear
voice. "That was why you forced him to challenge you, and that was why
you named a distant time and place? The truth, please."

"That was why."

She rose from the chair and leaned, panting, against the window-frame.
"Was there no other way--"

"It seemed the simplest way," he answered quietly. "There was no harm
done, and it answered my purpose." He paused, then went on. "My purpose
was to detain Mr. Rand from so rash and so fatal a step until it was too
late for him to take it."

She turned from the window. "You are generous," she said, in a stifled
voice. "I ask your pardon for my hard thoughts of you. Oh, for a storm
and a wind to blow! It is too hot, too heavy a night. I never wish to
smell the honeysuckle again."

He followed her back to the light of the candles. "Listen to me for a
moment. I do not think that you know--I am not sure that I know--the
iron strength of the laws that rule an ambitious nature. Ambition
becomes an atmosphere; the man whose temperament and self-training enure
him to it breathes it at last as though it were his native air. It
becomes that--an inner and personal clime, the source and spring of
countless actions, great and small. The light, too, is refracted, and
the great background of life is not seen quite truly. It is, I think, an
enchanted air, into which a man drifts upon a river of dreams and
imaginations--and how hard to reascend, against the current!" He paused,
stood a moment with downcast eyes, measuring the table with his hand,
then drew a quick breath and spoke on. "Given his parentage and descent,
his unhapp