na, shrewd and suspicious, sensed something of nervous strain in her
when she came in, later that day, to borrow a hat.

"Look here, Elizabeth," she began, "I want to talk to you. Are you going
to live in this--this hole all your life?"

"Hole nothing," Elizabeth said, hotly. "Really, Nina, I do think you
might be more careful of what you say."

"Oh, it's a dear old hole," Nina said negligently. "But hole it is,
nevertheless. Why in the world mother don't manage her servants--but no
matter about that now. Elizabeth, there's a lot of talk about you and
Dick Livingstone, and it makes me furious. When I think that you can
have Wallie Sayre by lifting your finger--"

"And that I don't intend to lift my finger," Elizabeth interrupted.

"Then you're a fool. And it is Dick Livingstone!"

"It is, Nina."

Nina's ambitious soul was harrowed.

"That stodgy old house," she said, "and two old people! A general
house-work girl, and you cooking on her Thursdays out! I wish you joy of
it."

"I wonder," Elizabeth said calmly, "whether it ever occurs to you that
I may put love above houses and servants? Or that my life is my own, to
live exactly as I please? Because that is what I intend to do."

Nina rose angrily.

"Thanks," she said. "I wish you joy of it." And went out, slamming the
door behind her.

Then, with only a day or so remaining before Dick's departure, and
Jim's hand already reaching for the shuttle, Elizabeth found herself
the object of certain unmistakable advances from Mrs. Sayre herself, and
that at a rose luncheon at the house on the hill.

The talk about Dick and Elizabeth had been slow in reaching the house
on the hill. When it came, via a little group on the terrace after the
luncheon, Mrs. Sayre was upset and angry and inclined to blame Wallie.
Everything that he wanted had come to him, all his life, and he did not
know how to go after things. He had sat by, and let this shabby-genteel
doctor, years older than the girl, walk away with her.

Not that she gave up entirely. She knew the town, and its tendency
toward over-statement. And so she made a desperate attempt, that
afternoon, to tempt Elizabeth. She took her through the greenhouses, and
then through the upper floors of the house. She showed her pictures
of their boat at Miami, and of the house at Marblehead. Elizabeth was
politely interested and completely unresponsive.

"When you think," Mrs. Sayre said at last, "that Wallie will have to
ass