n be any others about the grounds?"

"No'm. Dey mos'ly keeps ter de ma'shlan' en on'y runs whah de
undah-bresh ez thick. I gwineter fix dat ter-morrow. Mars' Valiant he
tell me ter grub et all out en make er bon-fiah ob it."

"That's right, Unc' Jefferson. Good night, and thank you for coming."

She started back to the house, when his voice stopped her.

"Mis Shirley, yo' don' keer ef de ole man geddahs two er three ob dem
roses? Seems lak young mars' moughty fon' ob dem. He got one in er glass
but et's mos' daid now."

"Wait a minute," she said, and disappeared in the darkness, returning
quickly with a handful which she put in his grasp.

"There!" she whispered, and slipped back through the perfumed dark.

* * * * *

An hour later she stood in the cozy stillness of her bedroom. It was
hung in silvery blue with curtains of softly figured shadow-cloth having
a misty design of mauve and pink hydrangeas. A tilted mirror on the
draped dressing-table had a dark mahogany frame set in upright posts
carved in a heavy pattern of grape-leaves. Two candles in silver
candlesticks stood before it, their friendly light winking from the
fittings of the dark bed, from the polished surface of the desk in the
corner and from the old piece of brocade stretched above the mantel,
worked like shredded silver cobwebs.

She threw off her gown, slipped into a soft loose robe of maize-colored
silk and stood before the small glass. She pulled out the amber pins and
drew her wonderful hair on either side of her face, looking out at her
reflection like a mermaid from between the rippling waves of a
moon-golden sea. She gazed a long critical minute from eyes whose blue
seemed now almost black.

At last she turned, and seating herself at the desk, took from it a
diary. She scanned the pages at random, her eyes catching lines here and
there. "A good run to-day. Betty and Judge Chalmers and the Pendleton
boys. My fourth brush this season." A frown drew itself across her
brows, and she turned the page. "One of the hounds broke his leg, and I
gave him to Rickey." ... "Chilly Lusk to dinner to-day, after swimming
the Loring Rapid."

She bit her lip, turned abruptly to the new page and took up her pen.
"This morning a twelve mile run to Damory Court," she wrote. "This
afternoon went for cape jessamines." There she paused. The happenings
and sensations of that day would not be recorded. They were unwritable.

She