"There is nothing to tell," answered Elizabeth, caressing the beautiful
hair and looking into the eyes that had tears of sympathy in them.

"I was afraid something had gone wrong, afraid that you would care."

Elizabeth sat thinking.

"I don't know," she said slowly at last, "I don't know whether I should
really care or not if I never saw him again."

Her companion looked at her a moment in silence, and when she began to
speak it was about something else.




CHAPTER IV.

GIRDING ON THE HARNESS.


Later that same morning a gentleman calling upon Mistress Katie Archdale
was told that he would find her with friends in the garden. Walking
through the paths with a leisurely step which the impatience of his mood
chafed against, he came upon a picture that he never forgot.

Great stretches of sunshine lay on the garden and in it brilliant beds
of flowers glowed with their richest lights, poppies folded their
gorgeous robes closely about them, Arab fashion, to keep out the heat;
hollyhocks stood in their stateliness flecked with changing shadows from