d herself steadily with each
day's routine. She bent her head over the fine embroidery of a robe she
was making for Mary. She cut the flowers for the vases and bowls, she
recited nursery rhymes to Fiddle, entrancing that captious young person
with "Oranges and Lemons" and "Lavender's Blue." She read aloud to the
Judge, planned menus for Aunt Claudia, and was in fact such an angel in
the house that Truxton, after three days of it, protested.

"Oh, what's the matter with Becky, Moms?"

"Why?"

"She hasn't any pep."

"I know."

"Isn't she well?"

"I have tried to have her see a doctor. But she won't. She insists that
she is all right----"

"She is not. She is no more like the old Becky than champagne is
like--milk---- Becky was the kind that--went to your head--Mums. You
know that--sparkling."

"I have wondered," Mrs. Beaufort said, slowly, "if anything happened
while I was away."

"What could happen----"

His mother sighed. "Nothing, I suppose----" She let it go at that. Her
intuitions carried her towards the truth. She had learned from Mandy and
the Judge that Dalton had spent much time at Huntersfield in her absence.
Becky never mentioned him. Her silence spoke eloquently, Mrs. Beaufort
felt, of something concealed. Becky was apt to talk of things that
interested her. And there had been no doubt of her interest in Dalton
before her aunt had gone away.

Randy, coming often now to Huntersfield, had his heart torn for his
beloved. No one except himself knew what had happened, and the knowledge
stirred him profoundly. He held that burning torches and a stake were
none too good for Dalton. He sighed for the old days in Virginia when
gentlemen settled such matters in the woods at dawn, with pistols,
seconds, a shot or two. Farther back it would have been an affair of
knives and tomahawks--Indian chiefs in a death struggle.

But neither duels nor death struggles were in the modern mode, nor would
any punishment which he might inflict on Dalton help Becky in this moment
of deep humiliation. He knew her pride and the hurt that had come to
her, he knew her love, and the deadly inertia which had followed the loss
of illusion.

Randy's love was not a selfish love. In that tense moment of Becky's
confession on the day of the barbecue, his own hopes had died. The boy
in him had died, too, and he had reached the full stature of a man. He
wanted to protect and shield--he was all tenderness. He