the woman who had signally
failed in her duty to others?"

"No," I answered with a groan. "But is there no hope in the
present?--nothing that I can do?"

She drew my face down toward her as she answered, "Only work and wait,
sweetheart," and her voice sank to a low whisper. "Heaven forgive me if I
wrong him in telling you. But there are no secrets between us, and you saw
his face. I fear that inadvertently he has lost much of Geoffrey's money
in rash ventures, as well as his own. Geoffrey would never trouble about
finance, and insisted on leaving his property in his hands, while, though
my father is fond of speculation and control, I am afraid he is a poor
business man."

She shivered all through, and said nothing for a few moments, while I
tried to soothe her; then she added slowly:

"I must stand beside him in this trouble; and if the worst comes I do not
ask you to leave me--it would be wrong and foolish, and I know you too
well. But, though I have read how many women have done such things, I will
never marry Geoffrey. It would be a crime to myself and to him, and he is
far too good for such treatment. Sweetheart, I must leave you, and it may
be so very long before we meet again; but I hope brighter days will dawn
for us yet. You will help me to do what I ought, dearest?"

Ten minutes later I rode through the woods at a breakneck gallop, reviling
fate and all things incoherently, until, as the horse reeled down an
incline amid a mad clatter of sliding shale, Ormond, of all men, must come
striding up the trail with an air of tranquil calm about him. There is a
certain spice of barbarism, I suppose, in most of us, and in my frame of
mind the mere sight of his untroubled face filled me with bitterness. It
seemed that, in spite of her refusal, he felt sure of Grace; and
something suggested that a trail hewn at Government expense was free to
the wealthy well-born and the toiler alike, and I would not swerve a foot
to give him passage. So only a quick spring saved him from being ridden
down, while I laughed harshly over my shoulder when his voice followed me:
"Why don't you look ahead, confound you?"

It was possibly well that I had trouble with the teams in the stock car on
the railroad journey, and that work in plenty awaited at Fairmead, for the
steady tramp behind the plough stilts served to steady me. After three
weeks' endurance, the man I had hired to help mutinied, and stated plainly
that he had no intention