"Why didn't you want Rose to go to Lucy's?" asked Sylvia, making a
charge in an entirely different quarter.

Henry scorned to lie. "I don't know," he replied, which was the
perfect truth as far as it went. It did not go quite far enough, for
he did not add that he did not know why Horace Allen did not want her
to go, and that was his own reason.

However, Sylvia could not possibly fathom that. She sniffed with her
delicate nostrils, as if she actually smelled some questionable odor
of character. "You men have mighty queer streaks, that's all I've got
to say," she returned.

When they were in the house again she resumed her book, reading every
word carefully, and Henry took up the Sunday paper, which he had not
finished. The thoughts of both, however, turned from time to time
towards Horace. Sylvia did not know where he had gone. She did not
suspect. Henry knew, but he did not know why. Horace had sprung
suddenly to his feet and caught up his hat as the two men had been
sitting under the trees. Henry had emitted a long puff of tobacco
smoke and looked inquiringly at him through the filmy blue of it.

"I can't stand it another minute," said Horace, almost with violence.
"I've got to know what is going on. I am going to the Ayres's myself.
I don't care what they think. I don't care what she thinks. I don't
care what anybody thinks." With that he was gone.

Henry took another puff at his pipe. It showed the difference between
the masculine and the feminine point of view that Henry did not for
one moment attach a sentimental reason to Horace's going. He realized
Rose's attractions. The very probable supposition that she and Horace
might fall in love with and marry each other had occurred to him, but
this he knew at once had nothing to do with that. He turned the whole
over and over in his mind, with no result. He lacked enough premises
to arrive at conclusions. He had started for the house and his Sunday
paper when he met Sylvia, and had resolved to put it all out of his
mind. But he was not quite able. There is a masculine curiosity as
well as a feminine, and one is about as persistent as the other.

Meantime Horace was walking down the road towards the Ayres house. It
was a pretty, much-ornamented white cottage, with a carefully kept
lawn and shade trees. At one side was an old-fashioned garden with an
arbor. In this arbor, as Horace drew near, he saw the sweep of
feminine draperies. It seemed to him that the arbo