y she felt more like flinging pride to the winds
than ever before, she was not able to formulate or even consciously name
her thoughts. A strange, unsettled feeling possessed her. She wondered
at herself that she did not contemptuously throw this letter of Leon
Carrington's into the fire, as she had the other two, but for some
reason did not do so. All night she was uneasy and slept but little. The
next morning she announced to Kate that she would spend the day at
Rosewood, sketching.

What the trouble was, Kate could only surmise, but wisely held her peace
feeling instinctively that now was no time for questions. She was
relieved to hear of the prospective recreation, for Grace always came
back from these trips with so much fresh inspiration, and renewed
enthusiasm.

It was a beautiful day, one of those mild, hazy days of October that
seem made to teach humanity some of its most sacred lessons. Nature is
the best of teachers if we know how to read her mystic pages, her many
and varied beauties, her wide diversities of expression, her fine
subtlety of language, for she is the handmaid of Truth, inasmuch as she
holds before our admiring eyes pictures of Truth and its wondrous laws.
If we can interpret the pictures, we are wiser and better and happier.

Grace was ever ready to listen to the oracles of nature, but now they
held a sweeter message than ever before, and she keenly anticipated the
pleasure in store for her as she seated herself in the car and disposed
of her sketching materials for the half hour's ride to Rosewood, a
pretty little woodland station near Hampton.

She generally walked the mile and a half to the farmhouse in the edge of
the woods, where she had made the acquaintance of a kind hearted old
lady, who loaned her a great Newfoundland dog belonging to the house,
for company in her rambles.

Mrs. Clayland was rejoiced to see her, for it had been several weeks
since Grace had called, and she was eager to tell her of the great tree
up in the ravine that had been blasted by the lightning, and about the
beautiful little waterfall caused by the Cherry Creek freshet.

Grace listened patiently as she rested, and asked questions that she had
asked many times before, because it pleased the old lady to tell of all
the beautiful spots and dainty bits of landscape in her vicinity. That
was next to being the artist.

Prince stood by, looking with intelligent eyes, first at the visitor
and then at his mistres