she bent her pretty head over the
map, following his moving pencil with her eyes, sometimes asking a
question, sometimes tracing a road with her own delicate finger.

Once or twice it happened that their hands touched en passant; and at
the light contact, she was vaguely aware that somewhere, deep within
her, the same faint dismay awoke; that in her, buried in depths
unsuspected, something incredible existed, stirred, threatened.

"Scott, dear," she said quietly, "I am glad you are happy over Roya-Neh
forest, but it _was_ too expensive, and it troubles me; so I'm going to
sleep to dream over it."

"You sweet little goose!" laughed the boy impulsively, passing his arm
around her. He had done it so often to this nurse and mother.

They both rose abruptly; the map dropped; his arm fell away from her
warm, yielding body.

He gazed at her flushed face rather stupidly, not realising yet that
the mother and nurse and elder sister had vanished like a tinted bubble
in that strange instant--that Kathleen was gone--that, in her calm,
sweet, familiar guise stood a woman--a stranger, exquisite, youthful,
with troubled violet eyes and vivid lips, looking at him as though for
the first time she had met his gaze across the world.

She recovered her composure instantly.

"I'm sorry, Scott, but I'm too sleepy to talk any more. Besides,
Geraldine isn't very well, and I'm going to doze with one eye open.
Good-night, dear."

"Good-night," said the boy vacantly, not offering the dutiful embrace to
which he and she had so long and so lightly been accustomed.

CHAPTER V

ROYA-NEH

Late on a fragrant mid-June afternoon young Seagrave stood on the Long
Terrace to welcome a guest whose advent completed a small house-party of
twelve at Roya-Neh.

"Hello, Duane!" cried the youthful landowner in all the pride of new
possession, as Mallett emerged from the motor; "frightfully glad to see
you, old fellow! How is it in town? Did you bring your own rods? There
are plenty here. What do you think of my view? Isn't that rather
fine?"--looking down through the trees at the lake below. "There are
bass in it. Those things standing around under the oaks are only silly
English fallow deer. Sorry I got 'em. What do you think of my house?
It's merely a modern affair worked up to look old and colonial.... Yes,
it certainly does resemble the real thing, but it isn't. No Seagraves
fit and bled here. Those are Geraldine's quarters up there beh