all avenues for the outpouring of the maturing woman within, and
powerless in his enchantment, Andrew Sevier was swept along on the tide
of her tenderness.

One day she had picked up his heavy gray gloves from the table and
tightened the buttons, listening all the while to an absorbing account of
a counter-move he was planning for the next day's editorial, and then had
been delightfully confused and distressed by his gratitude. The little
scene had sent him to the bare fields to fight for hours.

The major fairly gloried in her knowledge of the arrangement of his
library and delighted her with quick requests for his books during the
most absorbing moments of their discussions.

And again the observation that the spell was not being woven for him
alone went far to the undoing of Andrew Sevier. Her interest in the
affairs of David Kildare disturbed him not at all, but her sympathetic
and absorbed attention to a bad-luck tale with which Hobson Capers
reported to the major one morning when she sat with them, had sent him
home in a most depressed state of mind, and the picture of her troubled
eyes raised to Hobson's as he recounted the details of the wrenched
shoulder of his favorite horse, followed him through the day with
tormenting displeasure, though the offer of a cut-glass bottle full of a
delightfully scented lotion for the amelioration of the suffering animal
brought the semblance of a grin. And Hob, the brute, had gone away with
it in his pocket, accompanied by explicit directions as to its
application by means of a soft bit of flannel the size of a pocket
handkerchief, also provided. Andrew Sevier had a vision of the bottle
and the rag being installed in the most holy of holies in the apartments
of Hobson Capers and experienced a sweeping smashing rage thereat.