ion would induce her to
marry either of her "cousins."

If asked to put her thought into words, she would have boggled at the
task, for intuition is not to be defined in set speech. In her own
way, she had summed up the characteristics of the two men with one of
whom marriage had been at least a possibility. Hilton she feared and
Robert she despised, so if either was to become her husband, it would
be Hilton. But five minutes of John Trenholme's companionship had
given her a standard by which to measure her suitors, and both fell
wofully short of its demands. She saw with startling clearness of
vision that Hilton, the schemer, and Robert, the wastrel, led selfish
lives. Souls they must possess, but souls starved by lack of
spirituality, souls pent in dun prisons of their own contriving.

She was so lost in thought, thought that strayed from crystal-bright
imageries to nebulous shapes at once dark and terrifying, that the
first intimation she received of Robert Fenley's approach was his
stertorous breathing. From a rapid walk he had broken into a jog trot
when he saw Trenholme vanish over the wall. Of late he seldom walked
or rode a horse, and he was slightly out of condition, so his heavy
face was flushed and perspiring, and his utterance somewhat labored
when the girl turned at his cry:

"I say, Sylvia--you've given me such a chase! Who the deuce is that
fellow, an' what are you doing here?"

Robert had appeared at an inauspicious moment. Sylvia eyed him with a
new disfavor. He was decidedly gross, both in manner and language. She
was sure he could not have vaulted the wall.

"I'm not aware that I called for any chasing on your part," she said,
with an aloofness perilously akin to disdain.

He halted, panting, and eyed her sulkily.

"No, but dash it all! You can't go walking around with any rotten
outsider who forces himself into your company," was the most amiable
reply he could frame on the spur of the moment.

"You are short of breath," she said, smiling in a curiously impersonal
way. "Run back to the house. It will do you good."

"All right. You run with me. The first gong will go any minute, and
we've got to eat, you know, even though the pater _is_ dead."

It was an unhappy allusion. Sylvia stiffened.

"My poor uncle's death did not seem to trouble you greatly this
morning," she said. "Kindly leave me now. I'll follow soon. I am
waiting for Mr. Trenholme, who wants to show me some sketches."

"A ni