t--that has never been taxed or
called on. It may be pride, but it isn't only pride. Whatever it is,
I'm strong enough to bear a lot of trouble. I don't want you to think of
me at all in any way that will worry you."

She was making it so hard for him that he kissed her hastily and went
away. Her further enlightenment was one more detail that he must leave,
as he had left so much else, to fate or God to take care of. For the
present he himself had all he could attend to.

Half-way to the gate he turned to take what might prove his last look at
the old house. It stood on the summit of a low, rounded hill, on the
site made historic as the country residence of Governor Rodney. Governor
Rodney's "Mansion" having been sacked in the Revolution by his
fellow-townsmen, the neighborhood fell for a time into disrepute under
the contemptuous nickname of Tory Hill. On the restoration of order the
property, passed by purchase to the Guions, in whose hands, with a
continuity not customary in America, it had remained. The present house,
built by Andrew Guion, on the foundations of the Rodney Mansion, in the
early nineteenth century, was old enough according to New England
standards to be venerable; and, though most of the ground originally
about it had long ago been sold off in building-lots, enough remained to
give an impression of ample outdoor space. Against the blue of the
October morning sky the house, with its dignified Georgian lines, was
not without a certain stateliness--rectangular, three-storied, mellow,
with buff walls, buff chimneys, white doorways, white casements, white
verandas, a white balustrade around the top, and a white urn at each of
the four corners. Where, as over the verandas, there was a bit of
inclined roof, russet-red tiles gave a warmer touch of color. From the
borders of the lawn, edged with a line of shrubs, the town of Waverton,
merging into Cambridge, just now a stretch of crimson-and-orange
woodland, where gables, spires, and towers peeped above the trees,
sloped gently to the ribbon of the Charles. Far away, and dim in the
morning haze, the roofed and steepled crest of Beacon Hill rose in
successive ridges, to cast up from its highest point the gilded dome of
the State House as culmination to the sky-line. Guion looked long and
hard, first at the house, then at the prospect. He walked on only when
he remembered that he must reserve his forces for the day's
possibilities, that he must not drain himse