aid. 'Your little summer house
by the spring may be sacred ground?'

Promptly Helen made her a present of it. All that she wanted were some
things she had left there, a pair of spurs and a bridle; Sanchia was
perfectly welcome to the rest.

They all went out together for Sanchia's horse. And Sanchia, accepting
the altered battle-ground to which Helen's tactics had driven her,
seeing that she was to have little opportunity of getting Longstreet
off to herself, began a straight drive at her main objective. She laid
an affectionate hand on his arm as though thrown upon that necessity by
the irregularities of the trail in which she had stumbled, and turned
the battery of her really very pretty eyes upon him. With her eyes she
said, boldly yet timidly: 'You splendid man, you have touched my heart!
You noble creature, you have made Sanchia Murray love you! Generous
man, you have come to mean everything to a poor little woman who is
lonely!'

It is much to be said in a glance, but Sanchia had never travelled so
far on her chosen road of life if she had not learned, long ago, how to
put into a look all that she did not feel. And she did not stop with
the one look; again she appeared to stumble, again her eyelids
fluttered upward, her glance melted into his; again she flashed
sufficient message to redden Longstreet's cheeks and make his own eyes
burn with embarrassment. And since it was obvious that henceforward
the combat must be waged in the open, she did not await the unlikely
opportunity of some distant tete-a-tete to emphasize her intention.
Before she mounted she managed to allow the glowingly embarrassed man
to hold her two hands; and she told him whisperingly:

'I would to God that you had come a few years earlier into the life of
Sanchia Murray!' She sighed and squeezed his hands. Then she smiled a
wan little smile. 'You have come to mean so much, oh, so much, in my
poor little lonely existence.'

She mounted and rode away, waving her farewell, looking only at
Longstreet. They all saw how, before she reached the bend in the
trail, her handkerchief went to her eyes. Longstreet appeared
genuinely worried.

'I am sorry for that little woman,' he said thoughtfully.

'She's making love at you, papa,' laughed Helen, as though the matter
were of no moment but delightfully ridiculous. 'Fancy Sanchia Murray
falling in love with dear old pops!'

He looked at her severely.

'You should not speak lightly