seemed to have made no concession to time, save that
her waving hair was white. In its beauty and abundance, it was a marvel.
It sprang thickly up on each side of her parting, and the soft mass of
it was wound round and round on the top of her head. She was a beautiful
being, neither old nor young.

She stood there smiling at Clelia's approach.

"How do?" she said softly; but when the girl was near enough to betray
the trouble of her face, she added, "Whatever is the matter?"

"Come into the house, Sabrina," said Clelia, in a muffled voice. "I
can't tell it out here."

Sabrina dropped her trowel on a heap of weeds, and cast her gardening
gloves on the top. She led the way to the house, and when they were in
the coolness of the big sitting-room with its air of inherited repose,
she turned about and spoke again in her round, low voice. "Well?" There
was anxiety in the tone.

Clelia, facing her, began to speak with a hard composure.

"Richmond--Richmond Blake--" and her voice broke. She threw herself
forward upon Sabrina's shoulder and clasped her with shaking hands. "He
has given me up, Sabrina," she moaned, between her sobs. "It is over. He
has given me up."

Sabrina led her to the great chair by the window, and forced her into
it. Then she knelt beside her and drew the girl's head again to her
shoulder. She patted her cheek with little regular beats that had a
rhythmic soothing.

"There, there, dear," she kept saying. "There, there!"

Presently Clelia choked down her sobs, and raised her face, tempestuous
in its marks of grief.

"I'd just as soon tell you," she said, with a broken hardness, a
composure struggled for and then lost. "I'd just as soon anybody would
know it. I don't feel as if I'd any use for myself, now he don't prize
me. Well, Sabrina, he don't want me any more."

"You sure, dear?" asked Sabrina. "You better be sure."

"We got talking about the land," said Clelia, in a high voice.

"The ten-acre lot?"

"Yes. I said to him: 'There's that man from New York. He's offered you
two hundred dollars for it. Why don't you take it?'"

"What's the man from New York want it for?" asked Sabrina, with what
seemed a trifling irrelevance.

Clelia answered impatiently.

"I don't know. To build a summer cottage, I suppose. That's what
Richmond asked me, and I said I didn't know. Then he said he wasn't
going to sell till he knew what he was selling for."

"Well, I call that kinder long-headed, myself