The bell for the evening meal rang. There are hours in which we
transcend ourselves, but a little thing brings us back to the level on
which we live. As Sophia hastily brushed her dark hair, mortified pride
stabbed her again, and scorn again came to the rescue. "What does it
matter? It would have been better, truly, if I had had less to do with
him, but what has passed is of no importance to anyone, least of all to
me!"

As she had begun at first to rule her heart, so did she rule it all that
evening. But when she was again within her room alone she lingered,
looking out of her small casement at the fields where she had met Alec
Trenholme, at the road where she walked with him: all was white and cold
now in the moonlight. And soon she leaned her head against the pane and
wept.

Those are often the bitterest tears for which we can furnish no definite
cause; when courage fails, we see earth only through our tears, and all
form is out of proportion, all colour crude, all music discord, and
every heart a well of evil, and we bewail, not our own woes only, but
the woe of the world. So this proud woman wept, and prayed God wildly to
save the world out of its evil into His good--and did not, could not,
tell herself what was the exciting cause of her tears.

CHAPTER XVIII.

Just as that day had turned rosy at the close and then white with the
lesser light of night, so did the summer now fade away in a blaze of
colour, giving one last display of what life could do before leaving the
land to the shroud of the winter's snow. Cool bracing winds, of which
there had already been foretaste, now swept the land. The sun seemed
brighter because the air was clearer. The college boys had returned, and
were heard daily shouting at their games. A few days made all this
outward difference. No other difference had as yet come about.

Now that harvest was over and Captain Rexford was more at leisure,
Sophia felt that she must no longer postpone the disagreeable duty of
speaking to him seriously about his younger daughters. She chose an hour
on Sunday when he and she were walking together to a distant point on
the farm. She told the story of the flirtation of poor little Blue and
Red slightly, for she felt that to slight it as much as possible was to
put it in its true proportion.

"Yes," said Captain Rexford. He took off his hat and brushed back his
hair nervously. He had many difficulties in his life. "Yes, and then
there is W