nawares. I shall wait here
for you. You'd better not tell her I am going to kidnap her, I think I
would rather take her by surprise. She has to come, Eve, now make her see
it. Just a servant that is all I want to be to her for a while. But she
did love me, and she will again."

So Eveley walked swiftly up the drive to the house, keeping in the shadow
as much as possible, surprised to know that after all the years of her
disgust for the husband of her friend, her sympathies now were all with
him.

At the kitchen door she assumed her most winsome and disarming smile and
asked for Mrs. Landis.

"She does not wish to see any one," said the woman quickly. "She said
particularly that she would not see any callers."

"But she will see me, I am sure," said Eveley coaxingly. "You ask her.
Tell her it is Eveley Ainsworth. She always sees me."

"But she told me particularly," repeated the woman. "And she is not here
anyhow. She has gone over the hill. She likes to be among the pines. She
is not well, either. I am sorry, miss, but she is not here, and she would
not see you if she were."

"How far is it to the hill? And does she stay long?"

"It is not far," said the woman, with a wave of her hand toward the east.
"But she will not come home for luncheon. She has no appetite. And the
boys are out, so I have no one to send for her. I am sorry, miss."

"You think there is no use to wait, then?"

"Oh, no use at all, miss. She will be gone for hours, and she would not
see you if she were here."

"Tell her I came, won't you? Eveley Ainsworth. Thank you."

And with another disarming smile Eveley turned back to the path. But as
soon as she was out of sight of the house, she slipped off through the
trees, and started on a light run for the pine grove on the hill to the
east.

"As Lem says, poor thing, she has to," she said to herself, with a smile.
And very soon she was among the big pines, looking eagerly back and
forth, quite determined not to return to Lem until she had seen Miriam
and talked her into reason. And so at last she came upon her, sitting
somberly under the big trees, her back against a huge boulder, staring
away down the mountains into the haze of the sea in the west, where her
husband lived in the city by the bay.

"Miriam," Eveley called in a ringing voice, and ran joyously down the
path.

Miriam sprang up to meet her. "Eveley!" she cried, catching her hands
eagerly. And then, "Have you seen--Lem? Is he--