kersham himself was coming across the lawn to meet them when they
drew rein at the head of the driveway. With a deliberation so
proprietary that it set Barbara suddenly to gnawing her lip, he unbent
his long legs and straightened from his place on the top step of the
veranda; and even though the wicker chairs behind him were filled he
stood forth quite alone, extremely tall and straight, perfectly poised
and entirely immaculate. And without one outward sign of animosity to
give it ground, that other man sitting loose-thighed upon Ragtime's
back knew that he was wondering where she had been--why she had chosen
to go alone. Without exhibiting a trace of it upon his long face,
Wickersham still radiated a swift and chilling jealousy which, now that
he saw it again, Stephen O'Mara knew had never been entirely absent
from the face of the Archibald Wickersham he had known many years
before. Just as Miriam Burrell, with a studied deliberation that
matched that of the tall figure ahead of her, in turn detached herself
from the throng and came down the steps, Barbara's eyes raised to
Steve's. She did not stop to reason it; she couldn't have made it
sound reasonable had she tried, but she did not want those two to meet
again just then--those two whose boyhood quarrel had centered about
herself.

"Won't you keep Ragtime until you come back to Uncle Cal's to-night?"
she asked. "I've kept you loitering for hours and hours on the way.
But it will save you a little time."

And this time Steve understood. He nodded in reply.

"Not a chance?" he asked her quietly. "Not a chance?"

She was wheeling the roan.

"Not a chance," she whispered. "Not a chance in the world! But
we--Mr. Elliott promised to show us the works this afternoon," she
added in the next breath. "Can you--do you suppose you can come?"

And then, as she turned the mare and went skimming up the drive toward
the stable, she wondered why he laughed.

In his turn Steve set Ragtime's head toward the town in the valley.
And therefore he did not see that Archibald Wickersham was left
standing alone a moment in the middle of the lawn. But Miriam Burrell
saw and understood the black rage that shadowed his face. Long before
then she had penetrated to the layer of vanity beneath his air of
boredom. More than once she had used that knowledge maliciously, to
stir him. And she knew how unending could be his hatred for anyone who
had ever made him appear ridiculous