and her
possible view of the matter entirely out of the question. Horace,
while he was not in the least self-deprecatory, and was disposed to
be as just in his estimate of himself as of other men, was not
egotistical. It did not really occur to him that Rose's fancy, too,
might have been awakened as his own had been, that he might cause her
suffering. It went to prove his unselfishness that, upon entering the
house, and seeing Rose seated beside a window with her embroidery,
his first feeling was of satisfaction that she was housed and safe
from the fast-gathering storm.

Rose looked up as he entered, and smiled.

"There's a storm overhead," remarked Horace.

"Yes," said Rose. "Aunt Sylvia has just told me I ought not to use a
needle, with so much lightning. She has been telling me about a woman
who was sewing in a thunder-storm, and the needle was driven into her
hand." Rose laughed, but as she spoke she quilted her needle into her
work and tossed it on a table, got up, and went to the window.

"It looks almost wild enough for a cyclone," she said, gazing up at
the rapid scud of gray, shell-like clouds.

"Rose, come right away from that window," cried Sylvia, entering from
the dining-room. "Only last summer a woman in Alford got struck
standing at a window in a tempest."

"I want to look at the clouds," said Rose, but she obeyed.

Sylvia put a chair away from the fireplace and out of any draught.
"Here," said she. "Set down here." She drew up another chair close
beside Rose and sat down. There came a flash of lightning and a
terrible crash of thunder. A blind slammed somewhere. Out in the
great front yard the rain swirled in misty columns, like ghostly
dancers, and the flowering shrubs lashed the ground. Horace watched
it until Sylvia called him, also, to what she considered a place of
safety. "If you don't come away from that window and set on the sofa
I shall have a conniption fit," she said. Horace obeyed. As he sat
down he thought of Henry, and without stopping to think, inquired
where he was.

"He went down to Mr. Meeks's," replied Sylvia, with calm decision.

Horace stared at her. He wondered if she could possibly be lying, or
if she really believed what she said.

He did not know what had happened that afternoon; neither did Rose.
Rose had gone out for a walk, and while Sylvia was alone a caller,
Mrs. Jim Jones, had come. Mrs. Jim Jones was a very small,
angry-looking woman. Nature had apparently i