sire to wander had ceased,
she travelled in spirit, performing invisible pilgrimages in the
footsteps of her friend. She regretted that her one short visit to
England had taken her so little out of London--that her acquaintance
with the landscape had been formed chiefly through the windows of a
railway carriage. She threw herself into the architectural studies of
the Higher Thought Club, and distinguished herself, at the spring
meetings, by her fluency, her competence, her inexhaustible curiosity
on the subject of the growth of English Gothic. She ransacked the
shelves of the college library, she borrowed photographs of the
cathedrals, she pored over the folio pages of "The Seats of Noblemen
and Gentlemen." She was like some banished princess who learns that she
has inherited a domain in her own country, who knows that she will
never see it, yet feels, wherever she walks, its soil beneath her feet.

May was half over, and the Higher Thought Club was to hold its last
meeting, previous to the college festivities which, in early June,
agreeably disorganized the social routine of Wentworth. The meeting was
to take place in Margaret Ransom's drawing-room, and on the day before
she sat upstairs preparing for her dual duties as hostess and
orator--for she had been invited to read the final paper of the course.
In order to sum up with precision her conclusions on the subject of
English Gothic she had been rereading an analysis of the structural
features of the principal English cathedrals; and she was murmuring
over to herself the phrase: "The longitudinal arches of Lincoln have an
approximately elliptical form," when there came a knock on the door,
and Maria's voice announced: "There's a lady down in the parlour."

Margaret's soul dropped from the heights of the shadowy vaulting to the
dead level of an afternoon call at Wentworth.

"A lady? Did she give no name?"

Maria became confused. "She only said she was a lady--" and in reply to
her mistress's look of mild surprise: "Well, ma'am, she told me so
three or four times over."

Margaret laid her book down, leaving it open at the description of
Lincoln, and slowly descended the stairs. As she did so, she repeated
to herself: "The longitudinal arches are elliptical."

On the threshold below, she had the odd impression that her bare and
inanimate drawing-room was brimming with life and noise--an impression
produced, as she presently perceived, by the resolute forward dash--