e Pendletons despise fear since the beginning of
Dinwiddie's history, which they had helped to make, enabled her to
control her quivering muscles and to laugh at the reproachful protests
with which the children surrounded her. Through her mind there shot the
thought: "I have a secret from Oliver," and she felt suddenly guilty
because for the first time since her marriage she was keeping something
back from him. Then, following this, there came the knowledge, piercing
her heart, that she must keep her secret because even if she told him,
he would not understand. With the casualness of a man's point of view
towards an emotion, he would judge its importance, she felt, chiefly by
the power it possessed of disturbing the course of his life.
Unobservant, and ever ready to twist and decorate facts as she was, it
had still been impossible for her to escape the truth that men are by
nature incapable of a woman's characteristic passion for nursing
sentiment. To struggle to keep a feeling alive for no better reason than
that it was a feeling, would appear as wastefully extravagant to Oliver
as to the unimaginative majority of his sex. Such pure, sublime,
uncalculating folly belonged to woman alone!

When, at last, supper was over and the children were safely in bed, she
came downstairs to Oliver, who was smoking a cigar over a newspaper, and
asked carelessly:

"At what time do you start in the morning?"

"I'd like to be up by five," he replied, without lowering his paper.
"We're to meet the hounds at Croswell's store at a quarter of six, so
I'll have to get off by five at the latest. I wanted my horse fresh for
to-morrow, that's why I only went a mile or two this afternoon," he
added.

"Susan's to lend me Belle. I'm going with you," she said, after a pause
in which he had begun to read his paper again. This habit of treating
her as if she were not present when he wanted to read or to work, was,
she remembered, one of the things she had insisted upon in the beginning
of her marriage.

"By Jove!" he exclaimed, and the paper dropped from his hands. "I'm
jolly glad, but what will you do about the children?"

"Mother is coming to look after them. I'll be back in time to hear
Harry's lessons, I suppose."

"Why, of course; but, look here, you'll be awfully sore. You haven't
ridden after the hounds since I knew you. You might even get a fall."

"I used to go, though, a great deal--and it won't hurt me to be stiff
for a few days.