were joined an instant, as he thanked her with gallant smile and
bow. Then he was gone. And as his spurs ceased jingling on the veranda
outside, Hilda Bouverie glanced again at the song on the piano and
clapped her hands with unreasonable pride.

"I do believe that I was right after all!" said she.

II

Mr. Clarkson and his young men sat at meat that evening with a Miss
Bouverie hard to recognize as the apparently austere spinster who had
hitherto been something of a skeleton at their board. Coldly handsome
at her worst, a single day had brought her forth a radiant beauty
wreathed in human smiles. Her clear skin had a tinge which at once
suggested and dismissed the thought of rouge; but beyond all doubt she
had done her hair with less reserve; and it was coppery hair of a
volatile sort, that sprang into natural curls at the first relaxation of
an undue discipline. Mr. Clarkson wondered whether his wife's departure
had aught to do with the striking change in her companion; the two young
men rested mutually assured that it had.

"The old girl keeps too close an eye on her," said little Mr. Hack, who
kept the books and hailed from Middlesex. "Get her to yourself, Ted, and
she's as larky as they're made."

Ted Radford, the station overseer, was a personage not to be dismissed
in a relative clause. He was a typical back-blocker, dry and wiry,
nasally cocksure, insolently cool, a fearless hand with horse, man, or
woman. He was a good friend to Hack when there was no third person of
his own kidney to appreciate the overseer's conception of friendly
chaff. They were by themselves now, yet the last speech drew from
Radford a sufficiently sardonic grin.

"You see if she is, old man," said he, "and I'll stand by to collect
your remains. Not but what she hasn't come off the ice, and looks like
thoring if you take her the right way."

Ted Radford was a confirmed believer in the rightness of his own way
with all mankind; his admirable confidence had not been shaken by a long
succession of snubs in the quarter under discussion. As for Miss
Bouverie, it was her practice to play off one young man against the
other by discouraging each in his turn. But this evening she was a
different being. She had a vague yet absolute conviction that her
fortune was made. She could have sung all her songs to the twain, but
for the reflection that Mr. Clarkson himself would hear them too, and
report the matter to his wife on her return.

And