ably remember him in that Meader case,--he isn't a man one would be
likely to forget,--and I know that this quarrel with his father isn't of
Austen's seeking."

"Oughtn't he to be told--at once?" said Victoria.

"Yes," said the doctor; "time is valuable, and we can't predict what
Hilary will do. At any rate, Austen ought to know--but the trouble is,
he's at Jenney's farm. I met him on the way out there just before your
friend the Englishman caught me. And unfortunately I have a case which I
cannot neglect. But I can send word to him."

"I know where Jenney's farm is," said Victoria; "I'll drive home that
way."

"Well," exclaimed Dr. Tredway, heartily, "that's good of you. Somebody
who knows Hilary's situation ought to see him, and I can think of no
better messenger than you."

And he helped her into the runabout.

Young Mr. Rangely being a gentleman, he refrained from asking Victoria
questions on the drive out of Ripton, and expressed the greatest
willingness to accompany her on this errand and to see her home
afterwards. He had been deeply impressed, but he felt instinctively that
after such a serious occurrence, this was not the time to continue to
give hints of his admiration. He had heard in England that many American
women whom he would be likely to meet socially were superficial and
pleasure-loving; and Arthur Rangely came of a family which had long been
cited as a vindication of a government by aristocracy,--a family which
had never shirked responsibilities. It is not too much to say that he
had pictured Victoria among his future tenantry; she had appealed to him
first as a woman, but the incident of the afternoon had revealed her to
him, as it were, under fire.

They spoke quietly of places they both had visited, of people whom they
knew in common, until they came to the hills--the very threshold of
Paradise on that September evening. Those hills never failed to
move Victoria, and they were garnished this evening in no earthly
colours,--rose-lighted on the billowy western pasture slopes and pearl
in the deep clefts of the streams, and the lordly form of Sawanec
shrouded in indigo against a flame of orange. And orange fainted, by the
subtlest of colour changes, to azure in which swam, so confidently, a
silver evening star.

In silence they drew up before Mr. Jenney's ancestral trees, and through
the deepening shadows beneath these the windows of the farm-house glowed
with welcoming light. At Victoria's