"He did. Works here in town now--out at Bromley's."

He made no further reply, but somehow she felt an unuttered
conviction, on the part of the man there beside her, of Joe's loss of
heritage. And yet a certain compunction prevented her from making any
explanation--that it was not Joe's fault. There was a sort of sacred
inviolability about it. A hot little wave of feeling swept over her.
She had treated Joe miserably. She had yielded to her feelings like a
child. She ought to have been good sport enough to hide what she had
felt. But she hadn't. She was a snob. She had hoped to conceal that
she was not their sort--Joe and Mr. Mosby. In a sense, she had been
going back on her own people. As if she were trying to pass
them--trying to keep up with the procession. And yet that was exactly
what she was doing. But to show it!

The straight level path of the boulevard came abruptly to an end and
the road diverged to the left and mounted swiftly, skirting the
incline of a white, chalky hill densely covered with a tangle of scrub
oak, buckeye, cedar, and much underbrush. The slanting rays of the sun
were shut off abruptly as by a shutter and they rolled between
stretches of shade that were mistily fragrant and cool. Even the upper
air currents in the spaces above the road, up toward the sky, seemed
shadowy and unharried by the fierceness of the passing sunlight. The
motor settled down to the business of climbing, and once Claybrook
turned to her with a look of appreciation.

"Some park, this."

She hardly heard him, so intent was she on watching the road and the
occasional glimpses, through the tangle, of declivitous stretches
strewn with trunks of fallen trees and rank vegetation, down which the
wind went wandering with vague whisperings. They had been suddenly
transported out of the world of people into the world of hopes. The
city had been left leagues behind.

They made a quick, sharp turn to the right, the road almost doubling
back upon itself, and there was a steep grade for a short distance,
during which time Mary Louise caught herself leaning forward and
holding her breath in an instinctive impulse to help the labouring
car. And then they gained the top. Before them lay a tableland of many
acres thickly covered with trees. The grass, in the open spaces
between, was sparse, and there was much moss and lichen and drifts of
withered leaves, dried by the sun of more than one summer; and here
and there in the northern