t the brook they gazed at the brawling water
blankly. Lucinda remembered that she must not speak to Romney just in
time to prevent an exclamation of dismay. There was no tree! There was
no bridge of any kind over the brook!

Here was a predicament! But before Lucinda could do more than
despairingly ask herself what was to be done now, Romney answered--not
in words, but in deeds. He coolly picked Lucinda up in his arms, as
if she had been a child instead of a full grown woman of no mean
avoirdupois, and began to wade with her through the water.

Lucinda gasped helplessly. She could not forbid him and she was so
choked with rage over his presumption that she could not have spoken
in any case. Then came the catastrophe. Romney's foot slipped on a
treacherous round stone--there was a tremendous splash--and Romney and
Lucinda Penhallow were sitting down in the middle of Peter Penhallow's
brook.

Lucinda was the first to regain her feet. About her clung in
heart-breaking limpness the ruined voile. The remembrance of all her
wrongs that night rushed over her soul, and her eyes blazed in the
moonlight. Lucinda Penhallow had never been so angry in her life.

"YOU D--D IDIOT!" she said, in a voice that literally shook with rage.

Romney meekly scrambled up the bank after her.

"I'm awfully sorry, Lucinda," he said, striving with uncertain success
to keep a suspicious quiver of laughter out of his tone. "It was
wretchedly clumsy of me, but that pebble turned right under my foot.
Please forgive me--for that--and for other things."

Lucinda deigned no answer. She stood on a flat stone and wrung the water
from the poor green voile. Romney surveyed her apprehensively.

"Hurry, Lucinda," he entreated. "You will catch your death of cold."

"I never take cold," answered Lucinda, with chattering teeth. "And it is
my dress I am thinking of--was thinking of. You have more need to hurry.
You are sopping wet yourself and you know you are subject to colds.
There--come."

Lucinda picked up the stringy train, which had been so brave and buoyant
five minutes before, and started up the field at a brisk rate. Romney
came up to her and slipped his arm through hers in the old way. For
a time they walked along in silence. Then Lucinda began to shake with
inward laughter. She laughed silently for the whole length of the field;
and at the line fence between Peter Penhallow's land and the Grange
acres she paused, threw back the fascinator from