ause Dorcas
really did love animals and need not pretend.

It was a beautiful day at the races. There were all sorts of magnificent
turnouts, and ladies dressed in raiment such as Dorcas had never even
imagined. She innocently fancied Clayton must know any number of them,
and grew very humbly grateful to him for troubling himself about her.
When she suggested that he must have many friends among them, he laughed
with an amused candor, and told her they were gentry, a cut above. Yet
Dorcas continued to believe he might have consorted with them, if he
chose, and her manner to him had a softer friendliness because he was so
kind. And when she could forget her old-fashioned gown, she was quite
childishly content. At the gate that night he thanked her profusely for
the pleasure of her company, and added, boldly:--

"Won't you go to ride a little ways to-morrow night?"

A sudden shyness made her retreat a step, as if in definite withdrawal.
It was like a flower's closing.

"Maybe not to-morrow," she hesitated. It seemed to her the events she
had moved were rushing, of themselves, too fast.

"Next day, then," he called. "I'll be along about seven. Good-night."

And Dorcas went in to think over her day and dream again, not so much of
that as of the desire she was fulfilling for another man.

At that time Newell was very busy over questions of real estate. He had
bought, two years before, the whole slope of Sunset Hill, overlooking
three townships and the sea, and now city residents had found out the
spot and were trying to secure it. That prospect of immediate riches
drew his mind away from his gardening. He forgot the patient things that
were growing silently to earn him his desire, and only gave orders in
the morning to his two men before he drove away to talk about land. Even
Dorcas he forgot, save as a man remembers his accustomed staff leaning
against the wall till he shall need it. But he has no anxiety about it,
for he knows it will be there.

Dorcas hardly missed him, for she, too, had new ways to walk. Clayton
Rand came often now. He seemed to be fascinated, perhaps by her beauty
and the simplicity of her mien, and perhaps by the dignity of her
undefended state. She never asked him into her house, though she would
drive and walk with him. Her strength, that summer, seemed to her
boundless. She could work all day and sit up half the night sewing old
finery or washing and ironing it, and then she could sleep drea