but there he sits clinging to his rheumatism and the
past. I declare I nearly cried last night as he was showing me all those
old pictures."

"He's not very ill then," said Richard.

"Ill! Not he. It was that fool Silas sent the telegram. Just an attack of
rheumatism."

She went upstairs to change and the two young people went into the garden,
where Richard Pinckney was having some alterations done.

On the day Phyl's hair went up it seemed to Richard that a new person had
come to live with them. Phyl had suddenly turned into a young woman--and
such a young woman! He had never considered her looks before, to young men
of his age and temperament girls in pigtails are, as far as the manhood in
them is concerned, little more and sometimes less than things. But Phyl
with her hair up was not to be denied, and had he not been philandering
after Frances Rhett, and had Phyl been a total stranger suddenly seen, it
is quite possible that a far warmer feeling than admiration might have
been the result. As it was she formed a new interest in life.

He showed her the alterations he was making, slight enough and causing
little change in the general plan of the garden.

"I scarcely like doing anything," said he, "but that new walk will be no
end of an improvement, and it will save that bit of grass which is being
trodden to death by people crossing it, then there's all those bushes by
the gate, they're going, those behind the tree,--a little space there will
make all the difference in the world."

"Behind the magnolia?"

"Yes."

"I wish you wouldn't," said Phyl.

"Why?"

"Because they have been there always and--well, look!"

She led the way behind the tree, pushed the bushes aside and disclosed the
seat.

She no longer felt that she was betraying a secret. Her experience at
Grangersons had in some way made Vernons seem to her now really her home,
and Richard Pinckney closer to her in relationship.

"Why, how did you know that was there?" said Richard. "I've never seen
it."

"Juliet Mascarene used to sit there with--with some one she was in love
with. I found some of her old letters and they told about it--see, it's a
little arbour, used to be, though it's all so overgrown now."

"Juliet," said he. "That was the girl who died. I have heard Aunt Maria
talk about her and she keeps her room just as it used to be. Who was the
somebody?"

"It was a Mr. Rupert Pinckney."

"I knew there was a love story of some sort c