hree broadening years! There was conscious manhood,
effectiveness, in every movement; in the very bigness of him. She had a
little attack of patriotism, saying to herself that they did not fashion
such young men in the Old World--could not, perhaps.

Mammy Juliet's grandson, Pete, was down with the family carriage, and he
took his orders from Tom touching the bestowal of the luggage as he
would have taken them from Major Dabney. Ardea marked this, too, and
being Southern bred, wrote the Gordon name still a little higher on the
scroll of esteem. Pete's respectful obedience was, in its way, a patent
of nobility. The negro house-servant, to the manner born, draws the line
sharply between gentle and simple and is swift to resent interlopings.

When Pete had done his office with the European gatherings of the party
the ancient carriage looked like a van, and there was scant room inside
for three passengers.

"That means us for old Longfellow and the buggy," said Tom to Ardea.
"Do you mind? Longfellow is fearfully and wonderfully slow, same as
ever, but he's reasonably sure."

"Any way," said Ardea; so he put her into the buggy and they drew in
behind the carriage. Before they were half-way to the iron-works they
had the pike to themselves, and Tom was not urging the leisurely horse.

"My land! but it's good for tired eyes to have another sight of you!" he
declared, applying the remedy till she laughed and blushed a little.
Then: "It has been a full month of Sundays. Do you realize that?"

"Since we saw each other? It has been much longer than that, hasn't it?"

"Not so very much. I saw you in New York the day you sailed."

"You did! Where was I?"

"You had just come down in the elevator at the hotel with your
grandfather and Miss Euphrasia."

"And you wouldn't stop to speak to us? I think that was simply
barbarous!"

"Wasn't it?" he laughed. "But the time was horribly unpropitious."

"Why?"

He looked at her quizzically.

"I'm wondering whether I'd better lie out of it; say I knew you were on
your way to breakfast, and that I hoped to have a later opportunity, and
all that. Shall I do it?"

She did not reply at once. The undeceived inner self was telling her
that here lay the parting of the ways; that on her answer would be built
the structure, formal or confidential, of their future intercourse.
Loyalty to the halo demanded self-restraint; but every other fiber of
her was reaching out for a reestablishment