was a difference between him and the other stable men, and that he
didn't like that tone.

"You are a very dependable horseman," the great millionaire said. "I can
trust you. When Miss Sylvia wants to ride alone you will go with her and
see that she has no accidents. During your hours here you will be
entirely at her disposal."

Instead of arousing George's anger that command slightly thrilled him.

"So you're Morton," Sylvia said, indifferently. "I shall expect you
always to be convenient."

He ventured to look at last, pulling off his cap.

"You can depend on it," he said, a trifle dazed by her beauty.

She went out. Her father and her brother followed, like servitors of a
sort themselves. George had no sense of having allowed his position
there to be compromised. He only realized that he was going to see that
lovely creature every day, would be responsible for her safety, would
have a chance to know her.

"A peach!" a groom whispered. "You're lucky, Georgie boy."

George shrugged his shoulders.

"Maybe so."

Yet he agreed. She was a peach, and he took no pains to conceal his
appraisal from his parents that evening.

"Seen Old Planter's daughter yet?"

His father, a drooping, tired figure in the dusk of the little porch,
nodded.

"I haven't," his mother called from the kitchen. "Is she as pretty as
she was last summer?"

"Pretty!" he scoffed. "Who was the prettiest woman in the world?"

"I don't know," came the interested voice from the house. "Maybe the
Queen of Sheba."

"Then," George said, "she'd have cried her eyes out if she had seen Old
Planter's girl."

The elder Morton took his pipe from his mouth.

"Young men like you," he said, slowly, "haven't any business looking at
girls like Old Planter's daughter."

George laughed carelessly.

"Even a cat can look at a queen."

And during the weeks that followed he did look, too persistently, never
dreaming where his enthusiasm was leading him. Occasionally he would
bring her brother's horse around with hers or her father's. At such
times he would watch them ride away with a keen disappointment, as if he
had been excluded from a pleasure that had become his right. Lambert,
however, was away a good deal, and Old Planter that summer fought
rheumatic attacks, which he called gout, so that Sylvia, for the most
part, rode alone through remote bridle-paths with George at her heels
like a well-trained animal.

He knew he could not alter that all