y well," she answered, with the indifference of despair.

He stood in the doorway and watched a horseman descending into valley.

"Strange things may chance before to-morrow," he said to himself, and he
mechanically lighted another cigar. She idled with her fan.

II

He did not leave the house that afternoon. He kept his post on the
veranda, watching the valley. With an iron kind of calmness he was
facing a strange event. It was full of the element of chance, and he
had been taking chances all his life. With the chances of fortune he had
won; with the chances of love and happiness he had lost. He knew that
the horseman on the mountain-side was Cayley; he knew that Cayley would
not be near his home without a purpose. Besides, Cayley had said he
would come--he had said it in half banter, half threat. Houghton had had
too many experiences backward and forward in the world, to be afflicted
with littleness of mind. He had never looked to get an immense amount of
happiness out of life, but he thought that love and marriage would give
him a possible approach to content. He had chanced it, and he had lost.
At first he had taken it with a dreadful bitterness; now he regarded it
with a quiet, unimpassioned despair. He regarded his wife, himself, and
Cayley, as an impartial judge would view the extraordinary claims
of three desperate litigants. He thought it all over as he sat there
smoking. When the servants came to him to ask him questions or his
men ventured upon matters of business, he answered them directly,
decisively, and went on thinking. His wife had come to take coffee with
him at the usual hour of the afternoon. There was no special strain of
manner or of speech. The voices were a little lower, the tones a
little more decided, their eyes did not meet; that was all. When
coffee-drinking was over the wife retired to her room. Still Houghton
smoked on. At length he saw the horseman entering into the grove of
palms before the door. He rose deliberately from his seat and walked
down the pathway.

"Good day to you, Houghton," the horseman said; "we meet again, you
see."

"I see."

"You are not overjoyed."

"There's no reason why I should be glad. Why have you come?"

"You remember our last meeting five years ago. You were on your way to
be married. Marriage is a beautiful thing, Houghton, when everything
is right and square, and there's love both sides. Well, everything was
right and square with you and the woman