A little matter, nothing to be self-applauding about,--only a straw;
but--if it showed the possible way of the wind, the motive power that
might be courted to set through her life, taking her out of the
trade-currents of vanity? Might she have it in her, after all? Might she
even be able to come, if need be, to the strength of mind for wearing an
old gray straw bonnet, and bearing to be forty years old, and helping to
adorn the young and beautiful for looks that never--just so--should be
bent again on her?

Leslie Goldthwaite had read of martyr and hero sufferance all her life,
as she had looked upon her poor one-eyed fellow-traveler to-day; the
pang of sympathy had always been: "These things have been borne, are
being borne, in the world; how much of the least of them could I
endure,--I, looking for even the little things of life to be made
smooth?" It depended, she began faintly and afar off to see, upon where
the true life lay; how far behind the mere outer covering vitality
withdrew itself.




CHAPTER IV.


MARMADUKE WHARNE.

Up--up--up,--from glory to glory!

This was what it seemed to Leslie Goldthwaite, riding, that golden June