that I love ye," she said sulkily. "Ye
won't tell her?"

"No, no, of course not--not yet!" He dropped into his chair, his head
falling forward in his hands. "I wouldn't have believed," he said from
between his fingers, "that my love for you--"

Flea stopped him with an interruption:

"Are ye trying to stop lovin' me?"

Horace shook his shoulders, lifting swift eyes to hers. He noted her
expression irrevocable in its decision of silence. She was
extraordinarily lovely, and he grew suddenly angry that he had not the
power to change her, to draw from her unresistingly the story she had
locked from his perusal.

"Don't be foolish, Fledra!" he said quite harshly. "A man can't love and
unlove at will. I feel as if I should never know another happy moment!"

* * * * *

For several days Ann watched her brother in dismay. He had grown
taciturn and gloomy. The boyish energy had left him. She ventured to
speak to Everett about it.

"He doesn't seem like the same boy at all," she said sadly, after
explaining. "I can't imagine what has caused the change in him."

Everett remembered Shellington's face as it had bent over Fledra, and
smiled slightly.

"Have you ever thought lately that he might be in love?"

"In love!" gasped Ann. "No, I know that he isn't; for it was only at the
time of the Dryden Fair that he told me he cared for no one."

"He might have changed since then," Everett said quizzically.

"But he hasn't met anyone lately," argued Ann. "I know it isn't
Katherine; for--for he told me so."

"I know someone he met at the fair."

Ann, startled, glanced up.

"Who? Do tell me, Everett! Don't stand there and smile so provokingly.
If you could only understand how I have worried over him!"

Brimbecomb put on a grave face.

"Haven't you a very pretty girl in the house who is constantly under his
eye?"

Still Ann did not betray understanding.

"Don't you think," asked Everett slowly, "that he might have fallen in
love with--this little Fledra?"

An angry sparkle gleamed in Ann's eyes.

"Don't be stupid, Everett. Why, she's only a child. It would be awful!
Horace has some sense of the fitness of things."

Everett thought of the evening he himself had succumbed to a desire to
kiss Flea.

"No man has that," he smiled, "when he is attracted toward a pretty
woman."

"But she isn't even grown up."

How little one woman understands another! In his eyes Fledra had
matured;