Grace and Arthur had been fast friends, and Brier Hill was almost the
only place where he had visited on anything like terms of intimacy.
Indeed, it was rumored by the busy knowing ones of Shannondale that, had
the pretty widow been six years his junior instead of his senior, she
would have left no art untried to win him. But here the wise ones were
in fault, for though Grace Atherton's heart was not buried in her
husband's grave, and, in fact, had never been her husband's at all, it
was given to one who, though he cared for it once, did not prize it now,
for, with all the intensity of his noble nature, Richard Harrington, of
Collingwood; loved the beautiful girl whom, years ago, he had taken to
his home as his child, and whom, it was said, he was to marry. But if
the belief that the love she once refused and which she would fain
recover was lost to her forever rankled in her breast, Grace never made
a sign, and laughed as gayly and looked almost as young and handsome as
in the days when Richard was wooing her in the pleasant old English town
across the sea. She had loved Richard then, but, alas! loved money more,
and she chose a richer man, old enough to be her father, who had died
when she was twenty-one and left her the possessor of nearly half a
million, every dollar of which she would have given to have recalled the
days which were gone forever.

Grace had been intending to call upon Mrs. Tracy ever since she came to
the park. 'Not,' as she said to her friend, Edith Hastings, 'for the
woman's sake, for she knew her to be vulgar: but because she was a
neighbor and the sister-in-law of Arthur Tracy,' And so at last she
came, partly out of compliment and partly on business, into which last
she plunged at once. She was going to the mountains with Mr. Harrington
and Miss Hastings: her cook, who had been with her seven years, had gone
to attend a sick mother, and had recommended as a fit person to take her
place the woman who had just left Tracy Park.