ttle within. In
every lull came Scarborough's "Be SURE, Pauline!" to start the tumult
afresh. When the stars began to pale in the dawn she rose--she WAS
sure. Far from sure that she was doing the best for herself; but sure,
sure without a doubt, that she was doing her duty to her parents.

"I must not punish THEM for MY sin," she said.

Late the next morning she went to the farthest corner of the garden, to
the small summer-house where she had played with her dolls and her
dishes, where she had worked with slate and spelling-book, where she
had read her favorite school-girl romances, where she had dreamed her
own school-girl romance. She was waiting under the friendly old canopy
of bark--the posts supporting it were bark-clad, too; up and around and
between them clambered the morning-glories in whose gorgeous,
velvet-soft trumpets the sun-jewels glittered.

And presently he came down the path, his keen face and insolent eyes
triumphant. He was too absorbed in his own emotion especially to note
hers. Besides, she had always been receptive rather than demonstrative
with him.

"We'll be married again, and do the gossips out of a sensation," he
said. Though she was not looking at him, his eyes shifted from her
face as he added in a voice which at another time she might have
thought strained: "Then, too, your father and mother and mine are so
strait-laced--it'd give 'em a terrible jar to find out. You're a good
deal like them, Polly--only in a modern sort of way."

Pauline flushed scarlet and compressed her lips. She said presently:
"You're sure you wish it?"

"Wish what?"

"To marry me. Sometimes I've thought we're both too young, that we
might wait----"

He put his arm round her with an air of proud possession. "What'd be
the sense in that?" he demanded gaily. "Aren't you MINE?"

And again she flushed and lowered her eyes and compressed her lips.
Then she astonished him by flinging her arms round his neck and kissing
him hysterically. "But I DO love you!" she exclaimed. "I do! I DO!"

IX.

A THOROUGHBRED RUNS AWAY.

It was midday six weeks later, and Pauline and Dumont were landing at
Liverpool, when Scarborough read in the college-news column of the
Battle Field Banner that she had "married the only son of Henry Dumont,
of Saint Christopher, one of the richest men in our state, and has
departed for an extended foreign tour." Olivia--and Pierson
naturally--had known, but neither had had t