d the place, the spirit of the age, its share in all that
followed.

CHAPTER VIII

CAPTAIN MORTON ACTS AS COURT HERALD AND MORTY SANDS AND GRANT ADAMS HEAR
SAD NEWS

Spring in Mrs. Nesbit's garden, even in those days when a garden in
Harvey meant chiefly lettuce and radishes and peas, was no casual event.
Spring opened formally for the Nesbits with crocuses and hyacinths;
smiled genially in golden forsythia, bridal wreath and tulips, preened
itself in flags and lilacs before glowing in roses and peonies. Now the
spring is always wise; for it knows what the winter only hopes or fears.
Events burst forth in spring that have been hidden since their seedtime.
And it was with the coming of the first crocuses that Dr. Nesbit found
in his daughter's eyes a joyous look, new and exultant--a look which
never had been inspired by the love he lavished upon her. It was not
meant for him. Yet it was as truly a spring blossom as any that blushed
in the garden. When it came and when the father realized that the mother
also saw it, they feared to speak of it--even to themselves and by
indirection.

For they knew their winter conspiracies had failed. In vain was the trip
to Baltimore; in vain was the week with grand opera in New York, and
they both knew that the proposed trip to Europe never would occur. When
the parents saw that look of triumphant joy in their daughter's face,
when they saw how it lighted up her countenance like a flame when Tom
Van Dorn was near or was on his way to her, they knew that from the
secret recesses of her heart, from the depths of her being, love was
springing. They knew that they could not uproot it, and they had no
heart to try. For they accepted love as a fact of life, and felt that
when once it has seeded and grown upon a heart, it is a part of that
heart and only God's own wisdom and mercy may change the destiny that
love has written upon the life in which love rests. So in the wisdom of
the spring, the parents were mute and sad.

There was no hint of anger in their sorrow. They realized that if she
was wrong, and they were right, she needed them vastly more than if they
were wrong and she was right, and so they tried to rejoice with her--not
of course expressly and baldly, but in a thousand ways that lay about
them, they made her as happy as they could. Their sweet acquiescence in
what she knew was cutting the elders to the quick, gave the girl many an
hour of poignant distress. Yet the