xperience
a certain feeling of responsibility for Crawford--a feeling almost
maternal.

"He's so amusingly shy about speaking," she told Miss Garcide; "I
suppose he's anxious and bashful. I think I'll tell him that it is all
arranged. Besides, I promised Mr. Garcide to speak. I don't see why I
don't; _I'm not a bit embarrassed_."

But the days went shining by, and a new week dawned, and Miss Castle had
not taken pity upon her tongue-tied lover.

"Oh, this is simply dreadful," she argued with herself. "Besides, I want
to know how soon the man expects to marry me. I've a few things to
purchase, thank you, and if he thinks a trousseau is thrown together in
a day, he's a--a man!"

That evening she determined to fulfil her promise to Garcide as
scrupulously as she kept all her promises.

She wore white at dinner, with a great bunch of wild iris that Crawford
had brought her. Towards the end of the dinner she began to be
frightened, but it was the instinct of the Castles to fight fear and
overcome it.

"I'm going to walk down to the little foot-bridge," she said, steadily,
examining the coffee in her tiny cup; "and if you will stroll down with
your pipe, I ... I will tell you something."

"That will be very jolly," he said. "There's a full moon; I mean to have
a try at a thumping big fish in the pool above."

She nodded, and he rose and attended her to the door.

Then he lighted a cigar and called for a telegram blank.

This is what he wrote:

"_James J. Crawford, 318 New Broad Street, N.Y._:
"I am at the Sagamore. When do you want me to return?
"JAMES H. CRAWFORD."

The servant took the bit of yellow paper. Crawford lay back smoking and
thinking of trout and forests and blue skies and blue eyes that he
should miss very, very soon.

Meanwhile the possessor of the blue eyes was standing on the little
foot-bridge that crossed the water below the lawn.

A faint freshness came upward to her from the water, cooling her face.
She looked down into that sparkling dusk which hangs over woodland
rivers, and she saw the ripples, all silvered, flowing under the moon,
and the wild-cherry blossoms trembling and quivering with the gray wings
of moths.

"Surely," she said, aloud--"surely there is something in the world
besides men. I love this--all of it! I do indeed. I could find happiness
here; I do not think I was made for men."

For a long while she stood, bending