have been good enough to say that they will come. Of course, a dinner
party as it should be is quite impossible to us simple folk, but when a
lieutenant-governor commands, we must do the best we can--with the help
of our friends."

Mrs. Falchion was delighted, she said, and then they talked of trivial
matters, Ruth smoothing out the folds of her riding-dress with her whip
more earnestly, in preoccupation, than the act called for. At last she
said, in the course of the formal talk: "You have travelled much?"

"Yes, that has been my lot," was the reply; and she leaned back in the
gold-trimmed cane chair, her feet still in the belt of sunlight.

"I have often wished that I might travel over the ocean," said Ruth,
"but here I remain--what shall I say?--a rustic in a bandbox, seeing the
world through a pin-hole. That is the way my father puts it. Except, of
course, that I think it very inspiring to live out here among wonderful
mountains, which, as Mr. Roscoe says, are the most aristocratic of
companions."

Some one in the next room was playing the piano idly yet expressively.
The notes of Il Trovatore kept up a continuous accompaniment to their
talk, varying, as if by design, with its meaning and importance, and yet
in singular contrast at times to their thoughts and words. It was almost
sardonic in its monotonous persistence.

"Travel is not all, believe me, Miss Devlin," was the indolent reply.
"Perhaps the simpler life is the happier. The bandbox is not the worst
that may come to one--when one is born to it. I am not sure but it is
the best. I doubt that when one has had the fever of travel and the
world, the bandbox is permanently habitable again."

Mrs. Falchion was keen; she had found her opportunity.

On the result of this duel, if Ruth Devlin but knew it, depends her own
and another's happiness. It is not improbable, however, that something
of this was in her mind. She shifted her chair so that her face was not
so much in the light. But the belt of sunlight was broadening from Mrs.
Falchion's feet to her dress.

"You think not?" Ruth asked slowly.

The reply was not important in tone. Mrs. Falchion had picked up a paper
knife and was bending it to and fro between her fingers.

"I think not. Particularly with a man, who is, we will say, by
nature, adventurous and explorative. I think if, in some mad moment, I
determined to write a novel, it should be of such a man. He flies wide
and far; he sees all; he