score. Polly demurred, then consented and sat down while Caroline Darrah
took her departure, quietly but fleetly, down the side steps.

She was muffled in her long furs and she swung her sable toque with
its one drooping plume in her hand as she walked rapidly across the
tennis-courts, cut through the beeches and came out on the bank of the
brawling little Silver Fork Creek, that wound itself from over the ridge
down through the club lands to the river. She stood by the sycamore for a
moment listening delightedly to its chatter over the rocks, then climbed
out on the huge old rock that jutted out from the bank and was entwined
by the bleached roots of the tall tree. The strong winter sun had warmed
the flat slab on the south side and, sinking down with a sigh of delight,
she embraced her knees and bent over to gaze into the sparkling little
waterfall that gushed across the foot of the boulder.

Then for a mystic half-hour she sat and let her eyes roam the blue
Harpeth hills in the distance, that were naked and stark save for the
lace traceries of their winter-robbed trees. As the sun sank a soft rose
purple shot through the blue and the mists of the valley rose higher
about the bared breasts of the old ridge.

And because of the stillness and beauty of the place and hour, Caroline
Darrah began, as women will if the opportunity only so slightly invites
them, to dream--until a crackle in a thicket opposite her perch
distracted her attention and sent her head up with a little start. In a
second she found herself looking across the chatty little stream straight
into the eyes of Andrew Sevier, in which she found an expression of
having come upon a treasure with distracting suddenness.

"Oh," she said to break the silence which seemed to be settling itself