ny indication of widowhood. Nobody
mentioned Peter--Mr. Champneys because he was more interested in
talking about Glenn's business than his own, on the occasions when
he had time to talk about anything; Mrs. MacGregor, because she had
never seen Peter, knew nothing at all about him, except that there
was a nephew somewhere in the background of things, and wasn't in
the least interested in anything but her own immediate affairs;
besides, it never would have occurred to her to talk about her
employer's affairs, even if she had known anything about them. An
employer who was a gentleman, and very wealthy, belonged to the
Established Order, and Mrs. MacGregor had the thorough-going British
respect for Established Order. Nancy, for her part, wished to forget
that Peter existed. She never by any chance mentioned him, or even
thought of him if she could help it. So when young Glenn Mitchell,
after the pleasant South Carolina fashion, addressed her as "Miss
Nancy" it seemed perfectly all right to everybody.

Nancy was a little over eighteen then. She had grown taller, but she
retained the pleasant angularity of extreme youth. Because she
didn't know how to arrange her hair, Mrs. MacGregor sternly
forbidding frizzing and curling, and insisting upon a "modest
simplicity becoming to a young girl" she wore her red mane in a huge
plait. She had been so teased and badgered about her red hair, had
hated it so heartily, been so ashamed of it, that she didn't realize
how magnificent it was now, after two years of care and cleanliness.
It wasn't auburn; it wasn't Titian; it was a bright, rich,
glittering, unbuyable, undeniable red, and Nancy wore her plait as
a boy wears a chip on his shoulder. Young Glenn Mitchell was seized
with a wild desire to catch hold of that braid that was like a cable
of gleaming copper, and wind it around his wrists. For the first
time, he thought, he was seeing the true splendor and beauty of red
hair; and the girl had the wonderfully white skin that accompanies
it. He suspected that she must have been pretty badly freckled when
she was a child, for the freckles were still fairly visible, though
one saw that they would presently vanish altogether. The curve of
her throat and chin, the "salt-cellars" at the base of the neck,
left nothing to be desired. Altogether there was that about this
girl that caught and held his boyish attention. It wasn't that she
was pretty,--he had at first thought her plain. It was ra