r,
And wave their hands in a mute farewell.

--JEAN INGELOW.

The Melrose family was of old time on terms of intimacy with the house
of Baronet. It was a family with a proud lineage, wealth, and culture to
its credit. Rachel had an inherited sense of superiority. Too much
staying between the White Mountains and the Atlantic Ocean is narrowing
to the mental scope. The West to her was but a wilderness whereto the
best things of life never found their way. She took everything in
Massachusetts as hers by due right, much more did it seem that Kansas
should give its best to her; and withal she was a woman who delighted in
conquest.

Her arrival in Springvale made a topic that was soon on everybody's
tongue. In the afternoon of the day following her coming, when I went to
my father's office before starting out to the stone cabin, I found
Marjie there. I had not seen her since the party, and I went straight to
her chair.

"Well, little girl, it's ten thousand years since I saw you last," I
spoke in a low voice. My father was searching for some papers in his
cabinet, and his back was toward us. "Why didn't I get a letter,
dearie?"

She looked up with eyes whose brown depths were full of pain and sorrow,
but with an expression I had never seen on her face before, a kind of
impenetrable coldness. It cut me like a sword-thrust, and I bent over
her.

"Oh, Marjie, my Marjie, what is wrong?"

"Here is that paper at last," my father said before he turned around.
Even as he spoke, Rachel Melrose swept into the room.

"Why, Philip, I missed you after all. I didn't mean to keep you waiting,
but I can never get accustomed to your Western hurry."

She was very handsome and graceful, and always at ease with me, save in
our interviews alone.

"I didn't know you were coming," I said frankly; "but I want you to meet
Miss Whately. This is the young lady I have told you about."

I took Marjie's hand as I spoke. It was cold, and I gave it the gentle
pressure a lover understands as I presented her. She gave me a momentary
glance. Oh, God be thanked for the love-light in those brown eyes! The
memory of it warmed my heart a thousand times when long weary miles were
between us, and a desolate sky shut down around the far desolate plains
of a silent, featureless land.

"And this is Miss Melrose, the young lady I told you of in my letter," I
said to Marjie. A quick change came into her eyes, a look of surprise
and incredulity and