o again? She would always see
that hateful, smiling face sitting there and think how he had looked at
her. Then she shuddered and sobbed harder than ever. And mother earth,
true to all her children, received the poor child with open arms. There
she lay upon the resinous pine needles, at the foot of the tall trees, and
the trees looked down tenderly upon her and consulted in whispers with
their heads bent together. The winds blew sweetness from the buckwheat
fields in the valley about her, murmuring delicious music in the air above
her, and even the birds hushed their loud voices and peeped curiously at
the tired, sorrowful creature of another kind that had come among them.

Marcia's overwrought nerves were having their revenge. Tears had their way
until she was worn out, and then the angel of sleep came down upon her.
There upon the pine-needle bed, with tear-wet cheeks she lay, and slept
like a tired child come home to its mother from the tumult of the world.

Harry Temple, recovering from his rebuff, and left alone in the parlor,
looked about him with surprise. Never before in all his short and
brilliant career as a heart breaker had he met with the like, and this
from a mere child! He could not believe his senses! She must have been in
play. He would sit still and presently she would come back with eyes full
of mischief and beg his pardon. But even as he sat down to wait her
coming, something told him he was mistaken and that she would not come.
There had been something beside mischief in the smart raps whose tingle
even now his cheeks and lips felt. The house, too, had grown strangely
hushed as though no one else besides himself were in it. She must have
gone out. Perhaps she had been really frightened and would tell somebody!
How awkward if she should presently return with one of those grim aunts,
or that solemn puritan-like husband of hers. Perhaps he had better decamp
while the coast was still clear. She did not seem to be returning and
there was no telling what the little fool might do.

With a deliberation which suddenly became feverish in his haste to be
away, he compelled himself to walk slowly, nonchalantly out through the
hall. Still as a thief he opened and closed the front door and got himself
down the front steps, but not so still but that a quick ear caught the
sound of the latch as it flew back into place, and the scrape of a boot on
the path; and not so invisibly nor so quickly but that a pair of keen