sie could not
forecast the conditions that would be hers as the wife of Claude
Masterman. She only knew that she would be transported into an
atmosphere of money, and money she had learned by sore experience to be
the sovereign palliative of care. Love was much to poor Rosie, but
relief from anxiety was more. It had to be so, since both love and light
are secondary blessings to the tired creature whose first need is rest.
It was for rest that Claude Masterman stood primarily in her mind. He
was a fairy prince, of course; he was a lover who might have satisfied
any girl's aspirations. But before everything else he was a hero and a
savior, a being in whose vast potentialities, both social and financial,
she could find refuge and lie down at last.

It needed but this bright thought to brace her. She clasped her hands to
her breast; she lifted her eyes to the swimming moon; she drew deep
breaths of the sweet, strong air; she appealed to all the supporting
forces she knew anything about. A minute later she was speeding through
the darkness.

CHAPTER VII

Between the greenhouses, of which the glass gleamed dimly in the
moonlight, Rosie followed a path that straggled down the slope of her
father's land to the new boulevard round the pond. The boulevard here
swept inland about the base of Duck Rock, in order to leave that wooded
bluff an inviolate feature of the landscape. So inviolate had it been
that during the months since Rosie had picked wild raspberries in its
boskage the park commissioners had seized on it as a spot to be subdued
by winding paths and restful benches. To make it the more civilized and
inviting they had placed one of the arc-lamps that now garlanded the
circuit of the pond just where it would guide the feet of lovers into
the alluring shade. Rosie was glad of this friendly light before
engaging on the rough path up the bluff under the skeleton-like trees.
She was not afraid; she was only nervous, and the light gave her
confidence.

But to-night, as she emerged on the broad boulevard from the weedy
outskirts of her father's garden, the clatter of horse-hoofs startled
her into drawing back. She would have got herself altogether out of
sight had there been anything at hand in the nature of a shrub high
enough to conceal her. As it was she could only shrink to the extreme
edge of the roadside, hoping that the rider, whoever he was, would pass
without seeing her. This he might have done had not the