re, glad, in a curious, unreasoning way, for the quiet of the late
afternoon, for the faint fragrance of the Mariposa lilies blooming just
beyond the ledge. Yet he let her know nothing of this in what he said.

"So here you are, after all! I thought I should find you here."

She had not heard him come and was startled into a cry.

"You!" she gasped, and lifted eyes in which the telltale signs of tears
were still quite evident, so evident that, with a woman's instinct to
hide them, she caught up the necklace and held it toward him.

"See what I've found!" she exclaimed.

But he paid no heed. Instead, manlike, he proceeded, quite
unconsciously, to say the one thing that could hurt her most.

"I looked for you at the hotel first, then I came on up here. I knew you
wouldn't go till I came!"

The color that had flooded her face at the sound of his voice faded
again. She was quite white as she asked quietly:

"How could you know I would stay?"

He laughed easily, settling himself confidently on the moss at her side.

"Because I hadn't paid you yet," he answered gaily. "Don't you think
that was clever of me, Wildenai?"

"I would rather you did not call me that," she told him coldly, "It
sounds irreverent." And she dropped her eyes, which had filled again
miserably, to the film of white in her lap. Then, with a pitiful attempt
to hurt him in return: "Of course you realize that I really don't
know much about you. I don't want you to think that I distrusted you
exactly--" she marvelled at herself that she could say such things to
him, but went recklessly on. "The check wasn't there,--and so, well, it
seemed wisest to wait. They said you were coming back, and I couldn't
afford to lose it; so I stayed. Just a matter of business, you see!"
She finished in a tone which, except for a suspicious tremble, was
satisfactorily disagreeable.

But Blair's armor, since his return, seemed proof against such thrusts
as she could give.

"Won't play Indian at all, then?" he retorted teasingly. "But of course
not! How could you when you happen to come from the other side of the
house? However," he continued whimsically, "there are such things as
English roses, you know. I've always loved them, too, even when they
were thorny!"

He pulled absently at a fern growing near, while, suddenly, for no
particular reason, the color glowed again in the cheeks of the little
art teacher. She smiled, half unwillingly.

"But don't pull up the w