his whole section must have been in those old days, before
the coming of war and desolation. And Vaucluse was the flower, the
centre of it all!" His eye kindled. "Some day external prosperity will
return, and then Vaucluse and her ideals will be needed more than ever;
it is she who must hold in check the commercial spirit, and dominate, as
she has always done, the material with the intellectual." There was a
noble emotion in his face, reflecting itself in the younger countenance
beside his own. Poor, young, unknown, their hearts thrilled with pride
in their State, with the possibility that they also should give to her
of their best when the opportunity should be theirs.

"It is a wonderful old town," Lindsay went on again. "Even Wayland says
so,--our Greek professor, you know." His voice thrilled with the
devotion of the hero-worshipper as he spoke the name. "He is a Harvard
man, and has seen the best of everything, and even he has felt the charm
of the place; he told me so. You will feel it, too. It is just as if the
little town and the college together had preserved in amber all that was
finest in our Southern life. And now to think you and I are to share in
all its riches!"

His early consecration to such a purpose, the toil and sacrifice by
which it had been achieved, came movingly before her; yet, mingled with
her pride in him, something within her pleaded for the things which he
rated so low. "It used to be hard for you at home, Lindsay," she said,
softly.

"Yes, it was hard." His face flushed. "I never really lived till I left
there. I was like an animal caught in a net, like a man struggling for
air. You can't know what it is to me now to be with people who are
thinking of something else than of how to make a few dollars in a
miserable country store."

"But they were good people in Bowersville, Lindsay," she urged, with
gentle loyalty.

"I am sure they were, if you say so," he agreed. "But at any rate we are
done with it all now." He laid his hand over hers. "At last I am going
to take you into our own dear world."

It was, after all, a very small world as to its actual dimensions, but
to the brother it had the largeness of opportunity, and to Stella it
seemed infinitely complex. She found security at first only in following
minutely the programme which Lindsay had laid out for her. It was his
own as well, and simple enough. Study was the supreme thing; exercise
came in as a necessity, pleasure only as th