s there, and the place was as gay as
anything in this part of the country. Mrs. Kemp might say, "Milly,
you're pretty enough for any place just as you are!" But Milly was woman
enough to know what _that_ meant between women.

Her allowance was spent, four months in advance as usual, but Horatio
was easily brought to see the exceptionality of this event, and even old
Mrs. Ridge was moved to give from her hoard. It was felt to be something
in the nature of an investment for the girl's future. So Milly departed
with a new trunk and a number of fresh summer gowns.

"Have a good time, daughter!" Horatio Ridge shouted as the car moved
off, and he thought he had done his best for his child, even if he had
had to borrow a hundred dollars from his friend Snowden.

Milly was sure she was about to have the most wonderful experience of
her life.

Afterwards she might laugh over the excitement that first country-house
visit had caused, and recall the ugly little brown gabled cottage on the
shore of the hot lake, that did not even faintly resemble its Italian
namesake, with the simple diversions of driving about the dusty, flat
country, varied by "veranda parties" and moonlight rows with the rare
young men who dared to stay away from business through the week. All of
life, the sages tell us, is largely a matter of proportion. Como,
Wisconsin, was breathless excitement to Milly Ridge at eighteen, as she
testified to her hostess in a thousand joyous little ways.

And there was the inevitable man,--a cousin of the Claxton tribe, who
was a young lawyer in Baltimore. He spent a week at the lake, almost
every minute with Milly.

"You've simply fascinated him, my dear," Eleanor Kemp reported,
delightedly. "And they're very good people, I assure you--he's a Harvard
man."

It was the first time Milly had met on intimate terms a graduate of a
large university. In those days "Harvard" and "Yale" were titles of
aristocratic magic, as good as Rome or Oxford.

"He thinks you so unspoiled," her friend added. "I've asked him to stay
another week."

So the two boated and walked and sat out beside the lake until the stars
grew dim--and nothing ever came of it! Milly had her little extravagant
imaginings about this well-bred young man with his distinguished manner;
she did her best to please--and nothing came of it. Why? she asked
herself afterward. He had held her hand and talked about "the woman who
gives purpose to a man's life" and all t