this owed its origin less to the wilful
conspiracy of the few than it did to the confiding superstition of the
many.

"I hope Oliver won't do anything rash," said Susan, ignoring Miss
Priscilla's tribute. "He is so impulsive and headstrong that I don't see
how he can get on with father."

At this Virginia broke her quivering silence. "Can't you make him
careful, Susan?" she asked, and without waiting for an answer, bent over
and kissed Miss Priscilla on the cheek. "I must be going now or mother
will worry," she added before she tripped ahead of Susan down the steps
and along the palely shining path to the gate.

Rising from her chair, Miss Priscilla leaned over the railing of the
porch, and gazed wistfully after the girls' vanishing figures.

"If there was ever a girl who looked as if she were cut out for
happiness, it is Jinny Pendleton," she said aloud after a minute. A tear
welled in her eye, and rolling over her cheek, dropped on her bosom.
From some obscure corner of her memory, undevastated by war or by ruin,
her own youth appeared to take the place of Virginia's. She saw herself,
as she had seen the other an instant before, standing flushed and
expectant before the untrodden road of the future. She heard again the
wings of happiness rustling unseen about her, and she felt again the
great hope which is the challenge that youth flings to destiny. Life
rose before her, not as she had found it, but as she had once believed
it to be. The days when little things had not filled her thoughts
returned in the fugitive glow of her memory--for she, also, middle-aged,
obese, cumbered with trivial cares, had had her dream of a love that
would change and glorify the reality. The heritage of woman was hers as
well as Virginia's. And for the first time, standing there, she grew
dimly conscious of the portion of suffering which Nature had allotted to
them both from the beginning. Was it all waiting--waiting, as it had
been while battles were fought and armies were marching? Did the future
hold this for Virginia also? Would life yield nothing more to that
radiant girl than it had yielded to her or to the other women whom she
had known? Strange how the terrible innocence of youth had moved her
placid middle-age as if it were sadness!

CHAPTER II

HER INHERITANCE

A block away, near the head of High Street, stood the old church of
Saint James, and at its back, separated by a white paling fence from the
squat pinkish