Hal arrived on Tuesday afternoon. Patience for twenty-four hours after Beverly Peele’s visit looked upon life through grey spectacles. She had an impression of being a solitary figure on a sandy waste, illimitable in extent. Life was ugly practical reality. It frightened her, and she cowered before it, hating the future, her blood chilled, her nerves blunt, her brain stagnant.

But by Tuesday morning, being young and buoyant, she revived, and roamed through the woods, entirely loyal to the Stranger. She made up her mind that she would find him, that he could not be married. He must have waited for her. “Oh!” she thought, “if I could not believe that something existed in this world as I have imagined it, some man good enough to love and look up to, I believe I’d jump into the river. At least I have heard Him talk. He could not be a disappointment, like that hollow bronze. If there are many men in the world like Beverly Peele I don’t wonder women are in revolt. Women start out in life with big ideals of man, and if they are disappointed I suppose they unconsciously strive to make themselves what they should have found in man. But it is unnatural. It seems to me that man must be able to give woman the best she can find in life, whether he does or not. Something in civilisation has gone wrong.”

“I’ve been so restless,” she said to Hal, as the girls sat on the edge of the bed in the spare room, holding each other’s hand. “If you had not been coming I’d have gone to New York before this and seen Mr. Field, the editor of the ‘Day’—He promised me once he’d make a newspaper woman of me—”

“A what?” cried Hal. “What on earth do you want to be a newspaper woman for?”

“Well, I must be something. I couldn’t live out of Mariaville on my income, and the few hundred dollars Mr. Foord left me, and I don’t know of anything else I want to be.”

“You are going to be Mrs. Beverly Peele,” said Hal, definitely. “Beverly has the worst attack of my recollection. He has simply raved about you. Tell me, don’t you like him?”

Patience said nothing.

Hal leaned forward and turned Patience’s face about. “Don’t you like him?” she asked in a disappointed tone. “Tell me. Please be frank. I hate people who are not.”

“Well, I’ll confess it—I was disappointed in him. You see, I’d thought about him a good deal—several years, if you want to know the truth—and I was sure he was an intellectual man—”

Hal threw back her head and gave a clear ringing laugh. “Bev intellectual! That’s too funny. I don’t believe he ever read anything but a newspaper and horse literature in his life. But we all think he’s bright. I think it my duty to tell you that he has a fearful temper. He’s always been mamma’s pet, and she never would cross him, so he flies into regular tantrums when things don’t go to suit him; but on the whole he’s pretty good sort. Don’t you think he’s good-looking?”

“Oh, wonderfully,” said Patience, glad to be enthusiastic.

“Well, I’m sure you’ll like him when you’ve forgotten the ideal and got used to the real. Do please try to like him, for I’m bent on having you for a sister-in-law.”

“Well, I’ll try,” said Patience, laughing.

“You have no idea,” continued the astute Miss Peele, “how many girls have been in love with him. I’ve known girls that looked like marble statues—the marble statue with the snub nose; that’s our swagger New York type, you know,—well, I’ve seen them make perfect idiots of themselves about him. But so far he’s rather preferred the ladies that don’t visit at Peele Manor. I’ve brought some cigarettes. Can I smoke?”

“You can just do anything you like.”

“Thanks. Well, I think I’ll begin by lying down on this soft bed. It’s way ahead of the chairs and sofa in the parlour.”

She exchanged her frock for a peignoir, and extended herself on the bed. Patience sat beside her in a rocking chair, her troubles forgotten.

“By the way,” said Hal, suddenly removing her cigarette, “what was the shock you had the other day? Tell me.”

“Well, I will,” and Patience told the story of Rosita from beginning to end. Hal listened with deep interest.

“That’s a stunner,” she said, “and worth coming to Mariaville for. The little rip. She didn’t tell you half. I’ll bet my hopes of a tiara on that. But she does dance and sing like an angel. And so you were children together? How perfectly funny! Now tell me your history, every bit of it.”

Patience hesitated, then impulsively told the story, omitting few particulars.

Miss Peele’s cigarette was allowed to go out. “Well, well,” she said, when Patience had finished. “Fate did play the devil with you, didn’t she? I’m so glad you’ve told me. I’ll tell the family what I like, and you keep quiet. I have the inestimable gift of selection. You poor child! I’m so glad you fell in with Cousin Harriet; and now you are going to be happy for the rest of your life. Oh, it’s so good to be here in this quiet place. I’m so tired of everybody. Sometimes I get a fearful disgust. The same old grind, year after year. If I could only fall in love; but when I do I know it’ll be with a poor man. I never did have any luck.”

“Wouldn’t you marry him?”

Hal shook her wise young head. “I don’t know. You never can tell what you’ll do when you get that disease; but I do know that I’d be miserable if I did. Money, and plenty of it, is necessary to my happiness. You see we’re not so horribly rich. Papa gives mamma and May and me two thousand dollars each a year, and his income comes mostly from his practice. We haven’t anything else but a little house in town, and Peele Manor—which of course we’ll never sell—and a big farm adjoining. Bev runs that, and has the income from it—about three thousand dollars a year. When he wants more mamma gets it for him, and when he’s married of course he’ll have a lot more. Two thousand stands me in very well now, but as a married woman I want nothing under thirty thousand a year—and that’s a modest ambition enough. You can’t be anybody in New York on less. Oh, dear—life is a burden.”

“Your woes are not very terrible,” said Patience, drily.

“Oh, you’d think so if you were me. We suffer according to our capacities and point of view. What is comedy to one is tragedy to another. If I had to wear the same clothes for two seasons I’d be as miserable as a defeated candidate for the Presidency. Beer makes one man drunk and champagne another. Bev, by the way, never drinks. He’s rather straight than otherwise. What’s your ideal of a man, by the way? Of course you have an ideal.”

“Oh, I don’t know,” said Patience, vaguely. “A man with a big brain and a big heart and a big arm.”

Miss Peele laughed heartily. “You are not exacting in your combinations, not in the least.”

The week passed delightfully to Patience, although Hal became rather restless toward the end. She arranged Patience’s hair in six different fashions, then decided that the large soft coil suited her best. Patience’s nails were manicured, she was taught how to smoke cigarettes, and select extracts from French novels were read to her. Hal was an accomplished gossip, and regaled her hostess with all the whispered scandals of New York society. She was a liberal education.

Beverly did not call, nor did he write, and Hal anathematised him freely.

“But I have my ideas on the subject,” she said darkly. “Just you wait.”