place for her and no use for her." "Will you hook my frocks?" came her answer. Fancy telegraphing a man that! I was discreet enough to reply: "The cook will." So she came, as usual, in her amazing way. It took the village team two days to get her luggage up the mountain, I complaining all the time at her nonsense, she asserting that it was entirely on my account that she had brought so much, that she came to cheer me up, that she couldn't do it without looking her best, and to look her best she had to wear her best, and a whole lot of the philosophy she always indulged in and which was foolish but delightful. The luggage once installed, new troubles appeared; the cook and bottle-washer balked at her new duties. Deep down in her heart I think she was horribly shocked. Her cold, unsophisticated eye told me plainly enough that she didn't believe for a minute that Adelaide was even a third cousin. Cousin, indeed! Cousins didn't carry on that way with each other, and dress that way, and spend all their time dyeking (a mountain expression for making oneself as attractive as possible). Increased wages, however, allayed the question of propriety, and for a while the goose hung high. It was a very jolly time, that week or two before the thunderbolt. Mountain jaunts, all-day trips, village visits, evenings before a log fire, good books, a sympathetic voice to listen to, sympathetic eyes to meet yours; in a word, the companionship of a charming woman who didn't expect you to spoil it all by making love to her. It was perfect.

"I think I must be going home," Adelaide said one afternoon toward the end of June. We were having tea in front of the house-her suggestion-beside a flaming rhododendron, where she had placed some chairs and a rug or two.

"If you forsake me I shall die-I know I shall," I grumbled, heartily sad over the prospect.

"I've been told that before," Adelaide smiled, a look full of affectionate comradeship. "Somehow, though, no one has yet been complimentary enough to do it. Besides, you are getting dependent on me. That will never do. I promise you, though, to come back in the autumn. I love mountains at that time."

I was silent so long that she offered me a penny for my thoughts.

"I was trying to think of something that would make you stay."

"Just now-nothing. I'm in need of people, and I'm going to find them. I have a longing for lights, and music, and flowers-not wild flowers, flowers that grow in greenhouses and are out of season."

She had barely finished when I heard sounds behind us, and, turning, found Dr. Brooke coming up the path on his white speckled horse. He swung out of the saddle-stepped out describes it more exactly, as his long legs were very near the ground-threw the rein over the branch of a tree, and came straight toward us. Adelaide sent me a swift whisper: "Who is he?" and I had just time to explain before he was upon us.

"I was passing," he explained in his deep, mellow voice. "Thought I'd stop and say good evening." His expression said much more when his eyes fell on Adelaide; and with just cause. I have said she had an amazing way of dressing; that day was no exception. A vivid rose-red gown with heaps of shimmering embroideries is not exactly the costume one often happens upon in a mountain retreat. Add to this Adelaide's face, which is truly beautiful in its gayety and vivacity, and her beautiful throat and neck which showed to a generous degree-she claimed that God had given her no such excellence to hide-and one can quickly see that Dr. Brooke had just cause for a shock.

She acknowledged his bow indifferently -Adelaide is not a type interested in mountain specimens-while I pushed forward a chair for him in such a way that, seated, his face was toward her and me. It was this fortuitous arrangement of chairs which gave me the first clew to the situation. He began by looking at her with frank curiosity; then, not slowly, but in a flash, there sprang to life in his big brown eyes the most charming glow, a sort of dancing light of browns and yellows and blacks, a veritable excess of brilliance, merry, admiring, caressing, worshipping, and loving-oh, so loving! Then they grew warm and soft, luring, masculine, and spoke of something that women know at once, a thing that fas

Adelaide

was

splendid; I came near to falling in love with her myself.-Page 196.

cinates them and makes them wish to sacrifice themselves to its power, to surrender to it before it has gone. It fairly took my breath. It was far from anything I had ever imagined of him.

And do you think for a moment that Adelaide had not seen all this? Never! I knew by the trick she had, that raising of her hand to ascertain the condition of her coiffure, that she was alive to the situation and was loading her guns. It was unbelievable that she should have found it worth while, and yet, if you had seen his expression you would have found it so, too.

The conversation, goodness knows what it was about, rambled on in some way. He, I think, was silent most of the timewith his lips, never for a second with his eyes. Now and then I caught a question put to her with a "madam" at the end. He invariably used that form in addressing women. All this time Adelaide was showing off to her best, swinging one little satin-clad foot over the other, gesturing with her exquisite hands, arching her neck and brows, and from time to time patting her hair with that little caressing movement characteristic of graceful wo

men.

She was splendid; I came near to falling in love with her myself. She poured the tea for him-I doubt if he had ever tasted a cup before-and handed it to him in such a way that the dance in his eyes became a mad romp. In the end I began to feel uncomfortably de trop, and when he rose, bowed over her hand in the Old-World fashion, rather well done, too, I felt considerably relieved. He said something about the length of Adelaide's visit, and she had the audacity, right there before me, to tell him it was indefinite, she might remain all summer. When he was gone she sank down in her chair, covered her face with her hands, and laughed so long that I felt sure it was a form of hysteria; in fact, I believe it was. When she finally looked up I showed my disapproval.

"It was the most brazen piece of business I've ever witnessed. I'm ashamed of you. It was positively indecent."

Of me!" she retorted. "You're quite mad. I didn't do a thing; I didn't have to. I never had a man make love to me so violently before."

"Violent! That doesn't express it. I was looking for him to pick you up any moment, throw you across his horse, and ride off with you. I know that will be your fate in the end."

"Really, though," she said, a little more quiet, even a bit thoughtful, "wasn't it extraordinary! And it came without any preparation, without any of the usual signals. It was like waking out of a sound sleep and finding the room brilliantly illuminated."

"There's no doubt of its having been brilliant."

"Tell me about him; everything you know."

My information was meagre, aggravatingly meagre, she phrased it, and I was commanded, impatiently, too, to set out early the next morning and scour the country for details of his past, present, and future; intimate details, nothing general, oh, no; what she must have were facts, and, above all, any affairs, as she airily called them, which he might have had or was having at the present time. It is odd how a woman always believes that a man has an affair going on, no matter how sedate and absorbed in a life-work he may be! A point, by the way, which gives them away and shows what they are generally up to themselves.

My search was not entirely satisfactory, though it was at least reassuring. There appeared to be no affairs; there was nothing of interest, not even a wee bit of romance in anything I heard. The innkeeper had known him since they were boys together; the village chemist had, too; the Baptist preacher gave him a colorless four years' "record," and Mrs. O'Herron, who owned and ran the corner grocery, had "raised" him, though I must say she didn't look quite old enough for that. Of all the accounts, I chose hers as being a little more intimate than the others. His father had died soon after his birth; his mother had brought him. up, a quiet little woman from whom he had got his brown eyes and gentle manners. He had been educated at the State university, after which he had come back home and gone on living just as when his mother was with him, cared for by the negro servant who had been with them always. No, he had never been married;

there had never been any rumors of his having been engaged, though of course there were plenty of village and mountain girls who would be glad enough to marry him. Being the good customer I was, and a friend of his, as she, Mrs. O'Herron was, she would confide to me his one little vice, a sort of monthly slipping from the narrow path, a day or two of forgetfulness spent very considerately in bed, brought on by an overindulgence in " mountain moonshine." That was all; an uninteresting enough record for any one, with a sordid touch at the end to which Adelaide pinned her hopes. It must be for some reason, some sorrow, something in his past, that made this day or two of forgetfulness imperative. I could not make her see it as a failing devoid of romance. She would have it her way.

Three days passed with no mention of departure; and I did not bring up the subject, happy enough that anything would delay her. She might build all the castles she wished to about Dr. Brooke if that were all needed to detain her. The morning of the third day she would not go on the tramp that was our daily habit. Yes, she was quite well, only she felt like lounging and reading. Innocently, I left her, and happening to return unexpectedly for midday dinner, having found tramping without a jolly companion a pretty sorry affair, I was told by the cook that Adelaide had gone to the village immediately after my departure, having rigged herself out in all sorts of finery. Not exactly the cook's words, but what she meant to infer.

At one o'clock she returned, buoyant, breathless, and, seeing me, a little flustered.

"I just had to go to the village," she explained, dragging off a hat that must have given the village folk a turn. "There wasn't a tin of foie gras in the house, and there wasn't another thing that would take its place with me to-day. Don't you have foie-gras days?"

I admitted I did and was in for having it at luncheon, which sent her off into a more flustered condition than before and brought forth explanations about there not being any in the village, it had to be ordered and would take at least three

days: all this in a stammering, embarrassed tone which awakened my suspicions. She had been up to some devilment, I could have sworn, and after luncheon it came out. Adelaide, if she likes you, will tell you, in the end, pretty much everything she knows.

She had called on Dr. Brooke. What for? Oh, to see him about her digestion. "You've got the best in the world. Besides, you've never once complained of it." Of course she wouldn't have thought of letting me know she had lain awake, nights and nights with an excruciating pain. "I don't believe a word of it. It's your shameless craving for a flirtation." Was I a self-appointed censor to see that she didn't flirt? "Goodness knows, I don't mind," I retorted. "Only, I think it's rather heartless to break into this poor chap's peaceful life and, after you've had your fun with him, run off and leave him all broken up."

For half a minute she was silent. "He is the most fascinating man I ever met." This with a seriousness and in a defensive tone that made it worth noting.

"That's too preposterous!"

"I told you I had never had a man make love to me so quickly, so silently, so eloquently as he did that first day. I've been thinking about him ever since. Today I just had to see it again." "It! What?"

"That expression in his eyes when he looks at me."

"Well-did you?"

She flushed, laughed, and nodded. "You're conscienceless, Adelaide. And this is what you are remaining for! I thought it was out of charity to me."

Then came an outburst of gayety and a confession of the whole episode. Knowing her so well, all her little methods of attack and withdrawal, her manner of playing around a subject and never brazenly coming out with it, and yet handling it so subtly that it was brazen in the end; knowing her so well, it was easy enough to picture the proceeding as it had very likely taken place. I can see her going up the walk to his house, an eye open for every detail. She could tell you to a "T" how the negro servant's apron was made, she could tell you every picture on the walls, where the carpet was worn most,