arn he was building for them. At half-past three, in her
runabout, she had driven him to the East Tunbridge station, where he
had taken the train for New York. He had waved her a good-by from the
platform, and smiled: and for a long time, as she drove through the
silent roads, his words and his manner remained as vivid as though he
were still by her side. He was a man who had fought and conquered, and
who fought on for the sheer love of it.

It was a blue day in the hill country. At noon the clouds had crowned
Sawanec--a sure sign of rain; the rain had come and gone, a June
downpour, and the overcast sky lent (Victoria fancied) to the
country-side a new atmosphere. The hills did not look the same. It was
the kind of a day when certain finished country places are at their
best--or rather seem best to express their meaning; a day for an event;
a day set strangely apart with an indefinable distinction. Victoria
recalled such days in her youth when weddings or garden-parties had
brought canopies into service, or news had arrived to upset the routine
of the household. Raindrops silvered the pines, and the light winds
shook them down on the road in a musical shower.

Victoria was troubled, as she drove, over a question which had recurred
to her many times since her talk that morning: had she been hypocritical
in not telling her father that she had seen more of Austen Vane than she
had implied by her silence? For many years Victoria had chosen her own
companions; when the custom had begun, her mother had made a protest
which Mr. Flint had answered with a laugh; he thought Victoria's
judgment better than his wife's. Ever since that time the Rose of Sharon
had taken the attitude of having washed her hands of responsibility
for a course which must inevitably lead to ruin. She discussed some of
Victoria's acquaintances with Mrs. Pomfret and other intimates; and
Mrs. Pomfret had lost no time in telling Mrs. Flint about her daughter's
sleigh-ride at the State capital with a young man from Ripton who seemed
to be seeing entirely too much of Victoria. Mrs. Pomfret had marked
certain danger signs, and as a conscientious woman was obliged to speak
of them. Mrs. Pomfret did not wish to see Victoria make a mesalliance.

"My dear Fanny," Mrs. Flint had cried, lifting herself from the lace
pillows, "what do you expect me to do especially when I have nervous
prostration? I've tried to do my duty by Victoria--goodness knows--to
bring her up