e laws of nature--yes, hers would
be a life superbly different from the common. And when she and
Sam married, how gracious and forgiving she would be to all
those bad-hearted people; how she would shame them for their
evil thoughts against her mother and herself!

The Susan Lenox who sat alone at the little table in the
dining-room window, eating bread and butter and honey in the
comb, was apparently the same Susan Lenox who had taken three
meals a day in that room all those years--was, indeed, actually
the same, for character is not an overnight creation. Yet it was
an amazingly different Susan Lenox, too. The first crisis had
come; she had been put to the test; and she had not collapsed in
weakness but had stood erect in strength.

After breakfast she went down Main Street and at Crooked Creek
Avenue took the turning for the cemetery. She sought the Warham
plot, on the western slope near the quiet brook. There was a
clump of cedars at each corner of the plot; near the largest of
them were three little graves--the three dead children of George
and Fanny. In the shadow of the clump and nearest the brook was
a fourth grave apart and, to the girl, now thrillingly mysterious:

LORELLA LENOX
BORN MAY 9, 1859
DIED JULY 17, 1879

Twenty years old! Susan's tears scalded her eyes. Only a little
older than her cousin Ruth was now--Ruth who often seemed to her,
and to everybody, younger than herself. "And she was good--I
know she was good!" thought Susan. "_He_ was bad, and the people
who took his part against her were bad. But _she_ was good!"

She started as Sam's voice, gay and light, sounded directly
behind her. "What are you doing in a graveyard?" cried he.

"How did you find me?" she asked, paling and flushing and paling again.

"I've been following you ever since you left home."

He might have added that he did not try to overtake her until
they were where people would be least likely to see.

"Whose graves are those?" he went on, cutting across a plot and
stepping on several graves to join her.

She was gazing at her mothers simple headstone. His glance
followed hers, he read.

"Oh--beg pardon," he said confusedly. "I didn't see."

She turned her serious gaze from the headstone to his face,
which her young imagination transfigured. "You know--about her?"
she asked.

"I--I--I've heard," he confessed. "But--Susie, it d