t you see--can't you see?" she asked brokenly, baring her heart
with a desperate impulse. Her eyes were drawing him toward the future;
and, in the deep stillness of her look, it seemed to him that she was
putting forth all her power to charm; that her youth and bloom shed a
sweetness that was like the fragrance of a flower.

For an instant every thought, every feeling, surrendered to her appeal.
Then his face changed as abruptly as if he had put a mask over his
features; and glancing back over her shoulder, she saw that his mother
and Margaret Blair were walking along the concrete pavement under the
few old linden trees. As they approached it seemed to the girl that
Stephen turned slowly from a man of flesh and blood into a figure of
granite. In one instant he was petrified by the force of tradition.

"It is my mother," he said in a low voice. "She has not been in the
Square for years. I was telling her yesterday how pretty it looks in the
spring." He went forward with an embarrassed air, and Mrs. Culpeper laid
a firm, possessive touch on his arm.

"I thought a little stroll might do me good," she explained. "The car is
waiting across the street at Doctor Bradley's." Then she held out her
free hand to Patty, with a smile which, the girl said afterward to
Corinna, looked as if it had frozen on her lips. "Stephen speaks of you
very often, Miss Vetch," she said. "He talks a great deal about his
friends, doesn't he, Margaret?"

Margaret assented with a charming manner; and the two girls stood
looking guardedly into each other's eyes. "She is attractive," thought
Margaret, not unkindly, for she was never unkind, "but I can't
understand just what he sees in her." And at the same moment Patty was
saying to herself, "Oh, she is everything that he admires and nothing
that he enjoys."

Aloud the elder girl said casually, "It is so quaint living down here in
the Square, isn't it?"

"But it is too far away from everything," replied Stephen hurriedly. "It
must be very different from what it was when you came to balls here,
Mother."

"Very," answered Mrs. Culpeper stiffly because the cold hard smile was
still on her lips.

"It doesn't seem far away when you are used to it," remarked Patty in a
spiritless tone. The vague heaviness, like a black cloud covered her
heart again. She was jealous of Margaret, jealous of her sweet, pale
face, of her trusting blue eyes, of the delicate distinction that showed
in the turn of her head