When Sunday came Patience dressed herself with unusual care. It did not occur to her that people in different spheres of life arose at different hours, and she expected her guests any time after eight o’clock.

Of course she must wear unrelieved black, but after prolonged regard in the becoming mirror of the best spare room, she decided that it rather enhanced her charms, now that a week’s rest had banished the circles from her eyes and cleared her skin.

She had coiled her soft ashen hair loosely on the top of her head, pulling it out a little about her face—she wore no bangs. Her restless eyes were dark and clear and sparkling, her mouth pink. She carried her slender figure with a free graceful poise. The carriage of her head was almost haughty. Her hips had a generous swell. Her hands and teeth were very white.

“I certainly have a look of race,” she thought, “if I’m not a beauty. I’d give a good deal to know that my ancestors really did have good blood in their veins. I don’t care so much for money, but I’d like to be sure of that.”

After breakfast she wandered about restlessly. She had known few moments of peace since Miss Peele’s visit. The train had been fired, and her being was in a tumult. Beverly Peele, the Stranger, and the vague ideals of her earlier girlhood were inextricably mixed. The result was a being before whom she trembled with mingled rapture and terror. Her vivid imagination had evoked a distinct entity, and the love scenes that had been enacted between the girl and this wholly satisfactory eidolon were such as have time out of mind made life as it is seem a singularly defective composition to the wondering mind of woman.

At times she was terrified at the rich possibilities of her nature, so little suspected. The revelation gave her vivid comprehension of woman’s tremendous power for sacrifice and surrender, possibilities of which she had read with much curiosity, but little sympathy. For those women she felt a warm honour, a fierce desire to espouse their cause. For Rosita she had only loathing and contempt.

It was not only passion that was awake. Sentiment, that finer child of the brain, and the sweet faint feeling which assuredly lingers about the region of the heart, whatever its physical cause may be, were there in full measure to lend their potent lashings to that primeval force which is as mighty in some women as in some men. It is doubtful if a woman ever loves a man when in his arms with the same exaltation of soul and passion which she feels for that creation of her brain that he little more than suggests, and that is only wholly hers when the man himself is absent. Imagination in woman is as arbitrary as desire in man, and she is beaten down and crushed by this imperious and capricious brain-imp so many times in her life that the wonder is she is not driven to the hopes and illusions of religion, or to humour, long before the skin has yellowed and the eye paled.

And when the imagination has full sway, when the man has not been beheld, when he has been invested with every quality dear to the heart of the generously endowed woman, when, indeed, all eidola blend, and she has a confused vision of an immense and mighty force bearing down upon her which shall sweep every tradition out of existence and annihilate the material world, then assuredly man himself would do well to retire into obscurity and curse his shortcomings.

It was four o’clock, and she had been through the successive stages of hope, despair, hope, melancholia, hope, and resignation, before she heard the sharp clatter of hoofs on the road. She ran to the dining-room window, her heart thumping, and peered through the blind. They were coming! Hal sat her horse like a swaying reed, but the young man on the large chestnut rode in the agonised fashion of the day. He was of medium height, she saw, compactly and elegantly built, and the beauty of his face had defied the photographer’s art.

Patience ran to the kitchen and told Ellen to answer the bell immediately, then sat down by the stove to compose herself. She was still trembling, and wished to appear cold and stately, as Hal had recommended. When Ellen returned and announced the visitors, she sprang up, patted her hair, pulled down the bodice of her gown, and then, with what dignity she could muster, went forth to meet her fate. She did wish she had a train. It was so difficult to be stately in a skirt that cleared the ground.

As she entered the parlour Mr. Peele was standing by the opposite door. His riding gear was very becoming. Patience noted swiftly that his eyes were a spotted brown and that his mouth pouted under the dark moustache.

Hal came forward with both hands extended. “We have come, you see,” she said, “and we had to make a wild break to do it—had a lot of company; but I was bound to come. Patience, this is Beverly. He’s quite frantic to meet you. It was all I could do to keep him away until to-day.”

The young man bowed in anything but a frantic manner, and stood gracefully until the girls were seated. Then he took a chair and caressed his moustache, regarding Patience attentively.

“Would you mind if Bev smoked?” asked Hal. “He is just wild for a cigar. We had to ride so hard to keep warm that he didn’t have a chance, and he’s a slave to the weed.”

Patience glanced swiftly at the door, half-expecting to see the indignant wraith of Miss Tremont, then, almost reluctantly, gave the required permission. Mr. Peele promptly lit a cigar. Patience wondered if he would ever speak. Perhaps he did not think it worth his while. He looked very haughty.

“We had a perfectly beautiful ride,” said Hal, in her plaintive voice. “I’d rather be on a horse than on an ocean steamer, and I do love to travel. You look ever so much better than you did, Patience. You must have needed a rest.”

Mr. Peele removed his cigar. “Perhaps that was what she had been impatiently waiting for,” he remarked.

Patience stared at him. Her eyes expanded. Something seemed crumbling within her.

“Oh, Bev, you do make me so tired,” said his sister. “I tell him eighteen times a day that punning is the lowest form of wit, but he’s incorrigible. I suppose it’s in the blood, and I’m glad it broke out in him instead of in me. It is well to be philosophical in this life—”

“When you can’t help yourself—” interrupted Mr. Peele, easily.

Patience felt it incumbent upon her to make conversation, although her thoughts were dancing a jig.

“You have a beautiful horse,” she said to the young man.

His eyes lit up with enthusiasm. “Isn’t she a beauty?” he exclaimed. “She’s taken two prizes and won a race. She’s the daughter—”

“Patience doesn’t know anything about horses,” interrupted Hal. “What does she care whose daughter Firefly is?”

“Oh, I’m very much interested,” faltered Patience.

“Are you really?” cried Mr. Peele, with a smile so beautiful that Patience caught her breath. “I’ve got the rarest book in the country on horses—beautiful pictures—coloured—I’ll bring it up and explain it to you. Tell you a lot of stories about famous horses.”

“I shall be delighted.”

“Do you ride?”

“I used to ride a pony, but I haven’t been on a horse for so long I’ve almost forgotten what it’s like.”

“That’s too bad. There’s nothing like it. Makes you feel so good. When I have dyspepsia I just jump on Firefly, and I’m all right in less than no time. I take a canter for dyspepsia—although I can’t—er—always feel at home that way. Ahem!”

Patience wanted to tear her hair. It was with an effort that she kept her face from convulsing with disgust. She caught sight of the young man’s intellectual brow, and, without any premonitory consciousness, laughed aloud. Mr. Peele smiled back with the pleasure of appreciated wit, and resumed his cigar.

“Bev isn’t such a fool as he looks,” remarked Hal, airily. “Just have patience with him. We all have our little failings.”

Patience sat as if turned to clay. She could not talk. All her natural animation had deserted her. She wished they would go and leave her alone. But Hal pulled off her riding gloves, and made herself comfortable on the sofa. As she rattled on, Patience noticed how beautiful her nails were. She turned her own hands over so that the palms lay upward.

“Never mind,” said young Peele, in a low tone. “They’re much prettier.”

“What’s that?” cried Hal. “What are you blushing about, Patience? How lovely it is to blush like that. I’ve forgotten how—and I’m only twenty-two. There’s tragedy for you. It’s not that I’ve had so many compliments about my beauty, nor yet about my winning ways,—which are my strong point,—but I found so much to blush about when I was first launched upon this wicked world that I exhausted my capacity. And Bev always did tell such naughty stories—” She paused abruptly. “Dear me! perhaps I’ve made a bad break, and prejudiced you against my brother; and I want you to be good friends so that we can have jolly times together. Perhaps you have an ideal man—a sort of Sir Galahad. I haven’t sounded you yet.”

“Sir Galahad is not my ideal,” said Patience, with the quick scorn of the woman who is born with intuitive knowledge of man. “I could not find anything interesting in an elongated male infant.”

“Oh, how lovely!” cried Hal. “Give me the man of the world every time. I tell you, you appreciate the difference when you have to entertain ’em. And the elongated infant, as you put it, never understands a woman, and she has no use for that species whatever. He doesn’t even want to understand her, and a woman resents that as a personal insult. The bad ones hurt sometimes, but they’re interesting; and when you learn how to manage them it’s plain sailing enough. Mrs. Laurence Gibbs—a friend of mamma’s, awfully good, goes in for charity and all that sort of thing—said the other day that at the rate women were developing and advancing, the standard of men morally would have to be raised. But I said ‘Not much!’ that the development of woman meant that women were becoming more clever, not merely bright and intellectual, and that clever women would demand cleverness and fascination in man above all else; and that Sir Galahads were not that sort. It’s experience that makes a man interesting to us women,—they represent all we’d like to be and don’t dare. If they were like ourselves—if they didn’t excite our imaginations—we wouldn’t care a hang for them. Mrs. Gibbs was horrified, of course, and told me I didn’t know what I was talking about. But I said I guessed it was the other way. I’m not clever—not by a long sight,—and if I can’t stand a prig I know a clever woman can’t and won’t.”

“I’m so glad I’m not a prig,” murmured Mr. Peele.

“Oh, you’re a real devil. If you were clever now, you’d have to be shut up to protect society; but as it is, you just go on your good looks, so you’re not as dangerous as some.”

She rattled on, not giving the others a chance for more than a stray remark. Patience, listening with deep curiosity to this new philosophy, became aware of an increasing desire to turn her eyes to the man that had so bitterly disappointed her. A direct potent force seemed to emanate from him. It was her first experience of man’s magnetism, but she knew that he possessed it to a remarkable degree. When he finally shot out an insignificant remark she felt, in the excuse it gave her to turn to him, a sensation of positive relief. He was leaning back in his chair, in the easy attitude of a man that has been too accustomed to luxury all his life to look uncomfortable in any circumstances. With his picturesque garb, his noble, beautiful face, his subtle air of elegance and distinction, he looked the ideal hero of girlhood’s dreams. Patience wondered what Nature had been about, then recalled the many tricks of that capricious dame made famous in history, the round innocent faces of the worst boys in the Loyal Legion class, the saintly physiognomy of a Mariaville minister who had recently fallen from grace.

Peele was watching her out of his half-closed eyes, and as she met them he smiled almost affectionately. Patience averted her head quickly, angry that she had felt an impulse to respond, and fixed her attention on Hal. “Dear old Cousin Harriet,” that young woman was remarking, “how I do wish that I were even sorrier than I am that she is dead. I try to think it’s because I saw so little of her; but I know it’s just because I’m so beastly selfish. I don’t care a hang for anything that doesn’t affect my own happiness—”

“You’re not selfish,” interrupted Patience, indignantly.

“Oh, but I am,” said Miss Peele, with a comical little air of disgust which sat as gracefully upon her as all her varying moods and manners. “I get up thinking what I can get out of the day, and I go to bed glad or mad according to what the day has done for me. I don’t go in for Church work like Honora—dear Honora!—nor am I always doing some pretty little thing for people like May. I suppose you think I’m an angel because I came to see you. I assured myself at great length that it was my duty—but it was plain curiosity, no more nor less; and now I like you awfully, better than any woman I ever met—and I do so want you to come and visit us, but—”

“Couldn’t you come and stay with me?” asked Patience, hurriedly. She had no desire to visit Mrs. Gardiner Peele. “You know you have more or less company, and I should be very quiet for a while. And oh! I should so like to have you.”

“Oh, I’d love to! I’ll come and stay a week. I’m so sick of the whole family, Bev included. We won’t be going anywhere for three months out of respect for Cousin Harriet—mamma is very particular about those things—and I can get away as well as not. I’ll come on Tuesday,—can I? Bev will come up occasionally and see how I’m getting on—won’t you, Bevvy, dear?”

“I’d much rather you would not be here,” said Mr. Peele, calmly.

“Oh—really—well, we’re all young yet. I’m coming all the same. I suppose we must be going. We have to get home to dress for dinner, you know.”

She rose, and drew on her gloves. Her brother stood up immediately and helped her into her covert coat. “Well, Patience,” she said, kissing her lightly, “you’ll see me on Tuesday. I’ll come by train, and wire you beforehand. Mamma’ll raise Cain, but I’ll manage it. It’s only occasionally she’s too much for me. The cold glare of those blue eyes of hers freezes my marrow at times and takes all the starch out of me. It’s awful to have been brought up under that sort of eye. When Honora marries it’s the sort of eye she’ll have. She cultivates the angelic at present. Have I talked you to death, Patience? So good of you to ask me to come.”

Peele held out his hand, and Patience could do no less than lay hers within it. As it closed she resisted an impulse to nestle her own more closely into that warm grasp. He held her hand longer than was altogether necessary, and she felt indignantly that she had no desire to draw it away.

“That’ll do for one day,” said Hal, drily. “Come along, Beverly Peele. We won’t get home for coffee at this rate.”

When they had gone Patience threw herself on the sofa and burst into tears, then laughed suddenly. “I feel like the heroine of a tragedy,” she thought. “And the tragedy is a pun!”