ay nothing of being material for the newspapers, and her
conscience, as she reflected, grew uneasy at the thought of shielding
him. She knew that her father and mother, and, even more strictly, her
brother, would close their doors on a man whose enemies followed him over
seas and lay in wait for him in a peaceful park; but here she tested him.
A man of breeding would not ask protection of a woman on whom he had no
claim, and it was certainly not for her to establish an understanding
with him in so strange and grave a matter.

"It must be fun having a ranch with cattle on a thousand hills. I always
wished my father would go in for a western place, but he can't travel so
far from home. Our ranch is in Virginia."

"You have a Virginia farm? That is very interesting."

"Yes; at Storm Springs. It's really beautiful down there," she said
simply.

It was on his tongue to tell her that he, too, owned a bit of Virginia
soil, but he had just established himself as a Montana ranchman, and it
seemed best not to multiply his places of residence. He had, moreover,
forgotten the name of the county in which his preserve lay. He said, with
truth:

"I know nothing of Virginia or the South; but I have viewed the landscape
from Arlington and some day I hope to go adventuring in the Virginia
hills."

"Then you should not overlook our valley. I am sure there must be
adventures waiting for somebody down there. You can tell our place by
the spring lamb on the hillside. There's a huge inn that offers the
long-distance telephone and market reports and golf links and very good
horses, and lots of people stop there as a matter of course in their
flight between Florida and Newport. They go up and down the coast like
the mercury in a thermometer--up when it's warm, down when it's cold.
There's the secret of our mercurial temperament."

A passing automobile frightened her horse, and he watched her perfect
coolness in quieting the animal with rein and voice.

"He's just up from the farm and doesn't like town very much. But he shall
go home again soon," she said as they rode on.

"Oh, you go down to shepherd those spring lambs!" he exclaimed, with
misgiving in his heart. He had followed her across the sea and now she
was about to take flight again!

"Yes; and to escape from the tiresome business of trying to remember
people's names."

"Then you reverse the usual fashionable process--you go south to meet the
rising mercury."

"I hadn't t