over, at least the breakfast of Mr. Rose and his
daughter; no other member of the family had appeared. A maid reported
that Isabel had ordered her horse and had departed on an early ride to
the neighboring golf club, where she was engaged to play with an equally
athletic college girl, that morning. There was nothing to disturb the
customary pleasant routine or to suggest uneasiness. At the usual hour
Mr. Rose left for the city; he was on his way to New York when he first
caught the rumor that sent him instead to the farmhouse at Westbury.

Flavia, roseate, softly irradiated, moving in an atmosphere of undefined
expectation as difficult to breathe calmly as the rarefied air of a
mountain-top, had held herself to the accomplishment of her daily
charges. She was seated at her little white-and-gold desk in her
white-and-gold study, setting the household affairs in order for the
day with the dainty precision of all her methods, when Isabel came into
the room and stopped upright and rigid, near the door.

"You had better hear it now," the younger girl dully announced. "There
has been an accident on the course."

Flavia's hands flew over her heart, the room blackened.

"Corrie----" she gasped.

"No; Mr. Gerard. He is alive, that's all I know."

The scent of the yellow roses Flavia had put in her hair dilated to a
stifling heaviness that hindered breath; she covered her eyes with her
small cold fingers, seeking the dark, mute under torture. He was
alive--that niggard concession was made to Allan Gerard, whose rich
fullness of vigor and dominant presence last night had seemed the one
firm reality in a world of pleasant vagueness. Weak, conscious of
nothing but what her inward vision showed, she lay in her chair;
questioning no more, making no sign.

Suddenly Isabel, the self-assured, evenly poised Isabel, was on the
floor at her cousin's knees, burying her face in Flavia's pale-yellow
dress and sobbing in frantic hysteria.

"Flavia, Flavia, I can't bear it! I am afraid, I am afraid--if he should
die----"

Shocked back into strength, Flavia bent over her, soothing and caressing
with soft touches and inarticulate phrases of affection.

"Hush, dear, hush! Put your head here. Let me call Martha; you frighten
me, Isabel!"

The tempest did not last long. As abruptly as she had lost self-command,
Isabel regained it. Rising to her feet, she swept back the disordered
auburn curls from her flushed face and stood silent besid