tride her thoroughbred sat silent,
grey eyes fixed on the distant figures of Sylvia Landis and Siward, now
shoulder deep in the reeds.

"Was it--very bad last night?" she asked in a low voice.

Ferrall shrugged. "He was not offensive; he walked steadily enough
up-stairs. When I went into his room he lay on the bed as if he'd been
struck by lightning. And yet--you see how he is this morning?"

"After a while," his wife said, "it is going to alter him some
day--dreadfully--isn't it, Kemp?"

"You mean--like Mortimer?"

"Yes--only Leroy was always a pig."

As they turned their horses toward the high-road Mrs. Ferrall said: "Do
you know why Sylvia isn't shooting with Howard?"

"No," replied her husband indifferently; "do you?"

"No." She looked out across the sunlit ocean, grave grey eyes
brightening with suppressed mischief. "But I half suspect."

"What?"

"Oh, all sorts of things, Kemp."

"What's one of 'em?" asked Ferrall, looking around at her; but his wife
only laughed.

"You don't mean she's throwing her flies at Siward--now that you've
hooked Quarrier for her! I thought she'd played him to the gaff--"

"Please don't be coarse, Kemp," said Mrs. Ferrall, sending her horse
forward. Her husband spurred to her side, and without turning her head
she continued: "Of course Sylvia won't be foolish. If they were only
safely married; but Howard is such a pill--"

"What does Sylvia expect with Howard's millions? A man?"

Grace Ferrall drew bridle. "The curious thing is, Kemp, that she liked
him."

"Likes him?"

"No, liked him. I saw how it was; she took his silences for intellectual
meditation, his gallery, his library, his smatterings for expressions
of a cultivated personality. Then she remembered how close she came to
running off with that cashiered Englishman, and that scared her into
clutching the substantial in the shape of Howard. ... Still, I wish I
hadn't meddled."

"Meddled how?"

"Oh, I told her to do it. We had talks until daylight. ... She may marry
him--I don't know--but if you think any live woman could be contented
with a muff like that!"

"That's immoral."

"Kemp, I'm not. She'd be mad not to marry him; but I don't know what I'd
do to a man like that, if I were his wife. And you know what a terrific
capacity for mischief there is in Sylvia. Some day she's going to love
somebody. And it isn't likely to be Howard. And, oh, Kemp! I do grow
so tired of that sort of thing. Do you suppose a