rain from Pavilion Hill, had
speeded his wooing. He had swept Becky along on a rushing tide. He had
courted the Judge, and the Judge had pressed upon him invitation after
invitation. Day and night the big motor had flashed up to Huntersfield,
bringing Dalton to some tryst with Becky, or carrying her forth to some
gay adventure. Her world was rose-colored. She had not dreamed of life
like this. She seemed to have drunk of some new wine, which lighted her
eyes and flamed in her cheeks. Her beauty shone with an almost
transcendent quality. As the dove's plumage takes on in the spring an
added luster, so did the bronze of Becky's hair seem to burn with a
brighter sheen.

Yet the Judge noticed nothing.

"Did you ask him to dine with us?" he had demanded, when Dalton had
called Becky up on the morning of the receipt of Aunt Claudia's letter.

"No, Grandfather."

"Then I'll do it," and he had gone to the telephone, and had urged his
hospitality.

II

When Dalton came Becky met him on the front steps of the house.

"Dinner is late," she said, "let's go down into the garden."

The garden at Huntersfield was square with box hedges and peaked up with
yew, and there were stained marble statues of Diana and Flora and Ceres,
and a little pool with lily pads.

"You are like the pretty little girls in the picture books," said
George, as they walked along. "Isn't that a new frock?"

"Yes," said Becky, "it is. Do you like it?"

"You are a rose among the roses," he said. He wondered a bit at its
apparent expensiveness. Perhaps, however, Becky was skillful with her
needle. Some women were. He did not care greatly for such skill, but he
was charmed by the effect.

"You are a rose among the roses," he said again, and broke off a big
pink bud from a bush near by.

"Bend your head a little. I want to put it in your hair."

His fingers caught in the bronze mesh. "It is wound around my ring." He
fumbled in his pockets with his free hand and got his knife. "It may
pull a bit."

He showed her presently the lock which he had cut. "It seems alive," he
kissed it and put it in his pocket.

Her protest was genuine. "Oh, please," she said, "I wish you wouldn't."

"Wouldn't what?"

"Keep it."

"Shall I throw it away?"

"You shouldn't have cut it off."

"Other men have been tempted--in a garden----"

It might have startled George could he have known that old Mandy, eyeing
him from the kitchen, placed him in Eden's bower not