eived the admiration of every man in the Neighborhood.
Patton McRae's elastic heart added another to its list of occupants,
and John Wendell fell seriously in love with her. But always in the
foreground she placed von Rittenheim. It was not alone that she looked
for his coming, and monopolized him when he arrived; that she deferred
to him, and did half a hundred tell-tale things; but in some way, by a
hint here and a phrase there, she made every one understand how it had
been with them in the past,--how madly he had loved her; how foolish
she had been to break the engagement; how worse than foolish, for she
had broken his great, noble heart, too. But, now--with a pretty sigh
and an appealing look--now was her opportunity to remedy the harm she
had done. When one or two of the bolder ones hinted at an engagement,
she denied it, with a rebuking glance at her black gown, her
fascinating, floating diaphanous black gown. Still, it became evident
to every one that when a proper time had elapsed after Maximilian's
death, her consolation would be even more remedial.

John haunted her steps, and left her only when the Baron came. Then he
disappeared until his rival's departure. Sydney grew distant in manner
to von Rittenheim, and often he did not see her at all when he went to
Oakwood. Hilda's visit to Mrs. Carroll was prolonged on the ground that
seemed to have place in every one's mind, though no one could trace its
origin, that she would stay on near Friedrich until it was time to go
home to Germany to begin her wedding preparations,--say, until after
Christmas,--and that they would be married as soon as the year of
mourning was over.

"It would be disgracefully soon if her husband had been a good man, of
course, but he was such a beast!" And a shrug made all the necessary
condonement for the hastening of the marriage.

By September the whole neighborhood was converted to this belief, all
except John, who _would_ not believe, and Sydney, who had not trusted
herself to think.

The compulsion of thought seized her in her own room one night, after a
day when it had been forced upon her that there could be but one truth,
and that the conclusion to which her friends had come. From window to
window she walked, dragging her trailing draperies, softly blue in the
moonlight. She was fretted into constant motion by the impelling might
of a desire to do something that would put off the moment when she must
stop and think out the sit