about her horse; whether she liked the wild,
irregular roaming through the forest

' 'ith no one nigh to hender'--

as Lowell has it. This last was undeniably true.

Meantime Mr. Rollo himself was away again--gone for a few days
at first, and then by business kept on and on; and it suddenly
flashed into Wych Hazel's mind one day, that now, before he
got home, was the very time to go and have a good long talk
with Primrose and her father. Nobody there to come in even at
dinner time but Dr. Arthur; and him Wych Hazel liked so much
and minded so little, that Dr. Arthur was in some danger of
minding it a good deal. She would go early and ride Jeannie
Deans, and get home before the crowd of loungers got out for
their afternoon's play. At most it was but a little way from
Dr. Maryland's to the edge of her own woods; not more than
three miles perhaps; four to the gate.

Primrose was overjoyed to see her.

'What does make your visits so few and far between?' she cried
as her hand came to lift off Wych Hazel's hat.

'Well,--what does make yours?' said Hazel, gaily. 'I am come
for a little talk with you, and a lecture from Dr. Maryland,
and any other nice thing I can find.'

'Then we shall keep you to dinner, and I'll have your horse
put up. I do not see so much of you, Hazel, as I hoped I
should when you came. You are such a gay lady.'

It was difficult to deny this. However, the talk ran on to
other pleasanter topics, and was enjoyed by both parties for
about half an hour. Then came a hindrance in the shape of a
lady wearing the very face that had bowed to Wych Hazel so
impressively from the carriage in Morton Hollow. The very
same! the long pale features, the bandeaux of lustreless pale
hair enclosing them, and two of those lustreless eyes which
look as if they had not depth enough to be blue; eyes which
give, and often appropriately, the feeling of shallowness in
the character. But now and then a shallow lake of water has a
pit of awful depth somewhere.

Prim's face did not welcome the interruption.

'This is my sister, Prudentia--Mrs. Coles,' she said. 'It is
Miss Kennedy, Prudentia.'

A most gracious, not to say ingratiating, bend and smile of
Mrs. Coles answered this. She was a tall, thin figure, dressed
in black. It threw out the pale face and flaxen bandeaux and
light grey eyes into the more relief.

'I am delighted to see Miss Kennedy,' she said. 'It is quite a
hoped-for pleasure. But I have seen