the mirror, Mary started
down stairs, wondering at every step whom she would find. Time had been
when she would have pictured an imaginary suitor waiting for her below,
for it had been one of her pastimes when she was a child to manufacture
such mythical personages by the score. What they were like depended on
what she had just been reading. If fairy-tales, then it was a
blond-haired prince who came to her on bended knee to kiss her hand and
beg her to fly with him upon his coal-black steed to his castle. If she
had been dipping into some forbidden novel like _Lady Agatha's Career_,
then the fond suppliant was a haughty duke whom she spurned at first,
but graciously accepted afterward. Through many a day-dream, slender
lads and swarthy knights in armor, dauntless Sir Galahads and wicked St.
Elmos had sued for her favor in turn, with long and fervent speeches.
She did not know that there was any other way. And it had always been in
moon-lighted gardens that these imaginary scenes took place, with
nightingales singing in rose vines and jessamine arbors.

She had quit dreaming of such things since she came to Riverville.
Romance had little place in the hard, sad world with which her work
brought her in contact. So no such fancies passed through her mind now
as she went down the stairs; nothing but a keen curiosity to know which
of her old friends it was who waited below.

Dusk had fallen early that gray November evening, but the library was
aglow with the cheerful light of an open fire. Some one stood before it,
gazing down into the dancing flames, a tall, familiar figure,
broad-shouldered and erect. There was no mistaking who it was waiting
there in the gloaming. Only one person in all the world had that lordly
turn of the head, that alert, masterful air, and Mary acknowledged to
herself with a disquieting throb of the pulses that he was the one
person in the world whom of all others she wished most to see.

"Oh, Phil!" she cried happily from the doorway.

He had not heard her coming down the stairs and along the hall, so
softly was it carpeted, but at the call he turned and came to meet her,
both hands out, his handsome face suddenly radiant, as if the sight of
her brought unspeakable pleasure. Not a word did he say as he reached
out and took her hands in his and looked down into her upturned face.
But his eyes spoke. Their very smile was a caress, and the strong, warm
hands clasping hers closed over them as if they