pent a delightful two hours in the great park, losing herself in
its farthest, shadiest, and most unfrequented corners. She drove
herself, and intelligently. Horses were her passion, and not Lewis
himself understood their care and management better. Toward the cool of
the day and just as she had pulled the ponies down to a walk in a long,
deserted avenue overspanned with elms and great cottonwoods she was all
at once aware of an open carriage that had turned into the far end of
the same avenue approaching at an easy trot. It drew near, and she saw
that its only occupant was a man leaning back rather limply in the
cushions. As the eye of the trained nurse fell upon him she at once
placed him in the category of convalescents or chronic invalids, and she
was vaguely speculating as to the nature of his complaint when the
carriage drew opposite her phaeton, and she recognised Richard Ferriss.

Ferriss, but not the same Ferriss to whom she had said good-bye on that
never-to-be-forgotten March afternoon, with its gusts and rain, four
long years ago. The Ferriss she had known then had been an alert, keen
man, with quick, bright eyes, alive to every impression, responsive to
every sensation, living his full allowance of life. She was looking now
at a man unnaturally old, of deadened nerves, listless. As he caught
sight of her and recognised her he suddenly roused himself with a quick,
glad smile and with a look in his eyes that to Lloyd was unmistakable.
But there was not that joyful, exuberant start she had anticipated, and,
for that matter, wished. Neither did Lloyd set any too great store by
the small amenities of life, but that Ferriss should remain covered hurt
her a little. She wondered how she could note so trivial a detail at
such a moment. But this was Ferriss.

Her heart was beating fast and thick as she halted her ponies. The
driver of the carriage jumped down and held the door for Ferriss, and
the chief engineer stepped quickly toward her.

So it was they met after four years--and such years--unexpectedly,
without warning or preparation, and not at all as she had expected. What
they said to each other in those first few moments Lloyd could never
afterward clearly remember. One incident alone detached itself vividly
from the blur.

"I have just come from the square," Ferriss had explained, "and they
told me that you had left for a drive out here only the moment before,
so there was nothing for it but to come after