sed her beautiful face to him with pleasure flashing from
her warm cheeks and lips and eyes, she seemed to exhale something of
the vigorous life and impulse of the spring sunshine. Farnham felt that
he had nothing to do but stoop and kiss the blooming flower-like face,
and in her exalted condition she would have thought little more of it
than a blush-rose thinks of the same treatment.

But he refrained, and said "Good morning," because she seemed in no
mood to say it first.

"Good-by, for a day or two," she said, gayly, as she bent her head to
pass under the low lintel of the gate.

Farnham walked back to the house not at all satisfied with himself. "I
wonder whether I have mended matters? She is certainly too pretty a
girl to be running in and out of my front door in the sight of all the
avenue. How much better will it be for her to use the private entrance,
and come and go by a sort of stealth! But then she does not regard it
that way. She is so ignorant of this wicked world that it seems to her
merely a saving of ten minutes' walk around the block. Well! all there
is of it, I must find a place for her before she domesticates herself
here."

The thought of what should be done with her remained persistently with
him and kept him irritated by the vision of her provoking and useless
beauty. "If she were a princess," he thought, "all the poets would be
twanging their lyres about her, all the artists would be dying to paint
her; she would have songs made to her, and sacred oratorios given under
her patronage. She would preside at church fairs and open the dance at
charity balls. If I could start her in life as a princess, the thing
would go on wheels. But to earn her own living--that is a trade of
another complexion. She has not breeding or education enough for a
governess: she is not clever enough to write or paint; she is not
steady enough, to keep accounts,--by the Great Jornada! I have a
grievous contract on my hands."

He heard the sound of hoofs outside his window, and, looking out, saw
his groom holding a young brown horse by the bridle, the well-groomed
coat of the animal shining in the warm sunlight. In a few moments
Farnham was in the saddle and away. For awhile he left his perplexities
behind, in the pleasure of rapid motion and fresh air. But he drew rein
half an hour afterward at Acland Falls, and the care that had sat on
the crupper came to the front again. "As a last resort," he said, "I
can persuade h