It seemed very natural to be welcomed by Hetty and shown into the drawing-room. "Miss Judith, she'll be surprised!" Hetty exclaimed. "Lord, Mr. Baird, you done growed thin!"

"I've had too happy a summer to grow fat, Hetty."

"Why, you ain't got married, is you?" Hetty asked seriously.

"Far from it, Hetty—you run along and tell Miss Judith I'm here. I'm in a hurry, for I have to get back to town this evening."

Baird looked about the beautiful old room. How well he knew it! It was Judith's rightful setting; he was glad she possessed the place. The fact that she was a rich woman did not trouble him at all; if he loved her greatly, he supposed it would.

Judith came presently, her light quick step in the hall, then her actual presence, welcome in every movement, her cheeks warm and eyes very bright. She was still in black, but Baird thought he had never seen her look more youthful. Or was it simply because he felt so many years older than when he last saw her?

"You here, Nickolas?" she said.

Baird took the hands she held out to him, clasped them firmly. "Yes—to say good-by for a time—I'm sailing for France day after to-morrow. I've snatched a few minutes this afternoon because I wanted to see you."

There were swift thoughts surging through Judith's brain, but her answer was spontaneous enough: "That was good of you!"

"Yes, kind to myself," Baird said lightly. "I felt urged to come."

Judith's smiling eyes had taken instant note of his appearance, and her keen perception was busied over him. He lacked buoyancy, lacked it utterly; every trace of boyishness was gone. He had aged, hardened. He had the air of a man who looks coolly and joylessly upon his future.

Judith had learned nothing from Baird's letters. He had left the Ridge very suddenly; something had gone wrong. Probably Coats had intervened, or, possibly, when she had discovered herself an heiress, Ann had failed him. Judith had the jealous woman's bitter estimate of the girl who had brought both her brothers under her sway, and had entangled Baird also. The intensity of detestation she felt for Ann sometimes sickened Judith. That Ann had won part of Edward's fortune had ground Judith's detestation to a dagger's point.

Under her brilliant exterior Judith was quivering. She had longed for the sight and touch of this man and, but for Ann, she might have recaptured him. Yet she had refrained from dealing the girl a blow. For months Judith's soul had been crisscrossed by passions and burdened by secrets. And Judith was in revolt. In revolt against conventions, against her rearing, against herself; against everything. She was typical of many women of her period; the restless craving woman of 1905 was at heart a revolutionary, and ten years of revolt have molded her into the feminist of to-day.

Judith had been resolutely considering her future. What did life, lived as she was living it, offer her? Unproductive, undeveloping middle-years and a solitary old age. She felt that she had paid her last debt to Westmore, and that the future lay before her, to be lived in different fashion—if she had the courage to make the break. She had decided to make it.

And in her visioning of the future Nickolas Baird was a prominent figure. He was an ambitious man, vastly capable, and destined for big things, and she could help him. He would not marry Ann; she felt certain that she could prevent it; it was her duty to prevent it. He would recover from his infatuation, for he was not the sort of man who would be held very long by an infatuation.

Judith had been on the point of writing to Baird her momentous decisions, and in coming to her he had given her an unexpected opportunity. The smile did not leave her lips. "I have made all the arrangements, Nickolas—I intended to write to you about it before I left—that I am going to Paris, too—in a few days."

"You leave Westmore!" Baird was too much surprised to express pleasure.

"Yes, I am leaving Westmore—and I doubt whether I shall ever return to it." Her color had risen; though she smiled, a little of the bitterness she felt edged her words.

"I imagine it must be desolate for you here—but you, out of this setting—I can't conceive of it exactly." Then it occurred to Baird what this move of hers would mean to them both; a continued intimacy, certainly. The vague motives that had brought him to her prompted the quick addition: "We'll meet in Paris then, Judith—we'll see it together."

Though undefined, there was a suggestion both in his words and his manner that affected Judith curiously, urging her to a sudden defiant candor. What had her restrained, conventional life won for her? Nothing more than expressions of gallant admiration; never the vital gripping thing. "My setting!" she said scornfully. "A woman reared as I have been has no more freedom of will than a walled-in prisoner! She's a perfect slave, bound to the past and handed over hand-tied into the future. From now on, I'm going to live. I am going to know countries, and nations, and women and men—more as a man knows them. I'm going to think as I please and live as I please. Not even the past is going to dictate my future!" She had flung out her resolve, body tense and head high.

Baird studied her; she had both surprised and amused him. Though not widely experienced, he had met this sort of revolt degenerated into mere free-living. Baird considered himself broad-minded, but he had not passed beyond the conception that a woman's assertion of free thought and action invariably meant that she was considering—as he would have expressed it to himself—"going on the loose."

But Judith Westmore, with her monumental pride and her immense self-respect and her narrowly conventional rearing, talking of becoming a free-lance! She didn't know what she was talking about; she could no more do it than she could fly. She would see Paris—the world and its peoples, for that matter—and "men," as conventionally as her class and kind always saw them. She was simply worn into exasperation by Westmore troubles—and her love for him. The thing was laughable—and a little sad.

It was Baird's very genuine admiration and liking for Judith that was responsible for this conclusion. To almost any other attractive woman who had tempted his present uncertain mood, he would have answered, and meaningly, "Well, why not?" But to Judith he said kindly and amusedly, "I don't wonder you want to throw all this off and get out into breathing space. It'll do you good to get a change. I don't believe you'll paint Paris a vivid red, though, Judith, even if I tried to help you do it."

It was evident that he had not taken her seriously, and Judith decided that it was as well that he had not done so; she had said much more than she had intended to say. The future was before them, and he would discover soon enough that she was in deadly earnest. He would find a changed woman when they met in Paris.

She regained her usual bright manner. "I'm glad you're not too shocked to continue our acquaintance. I hope you'll come to see me in Paris, and then you can tell me what you think of my new way of life."

Baird smiled. "Of course I'll come."

She was very beautiful as she stood there, head high and with the color of defiance still warming her cheeks. The ugly ache in Baird reminded him that, at a few words from him, her structure of independence would crumble. She would marry him to-morrow if he asked her, and give him an immense devotion. His flush deepened into a dull red.

Judith wondered of what he was thinking so absorbedly. Of Ann? Mentally, she had passed on to the other decision she had reached. "Nickolas, you knew, of course, that Edward remembered Ann Penniman very generously in his will?" she asked.

Baird started and stiffened. "Yes, so I understand."

"Do you still care about her?... I wouldn't ask unless I had a good reason."

Baird had not realized that anything could hurt so keenly as this questioning. His thoughts of a moment ago had vanished at the first mention of Ann's name. "Yes, I love her just the same."

"But things haven't gone very smoothly, I am afraid, Nickolas?"

"No—they haven't.... I love Ann—she doesn't love me."

"I doubt whether she is capable of loving anybody, very much," Judith said quietly. "I hear that she is going to take her little fortune and leave the Ridge—educate herself; first of all, for she is ambitious.... You mean to see her before you go, I suppose?"

"Yes."

Baird did not know why he said it; he had meant to go without seeing Ann. But, from the depths of him, the "Yes" came, resonant with determination.

Judith grew dead white, for what she meant to say next was of tragically serious import. And it was not jealousy alone that actuated her. She spoke very slowly and clearly. "I'm sorry to hurt you, Nickolas—I'm certain you don't know—but if you really mean to persist, if you intend to try to persuade Ann to marry you, you ought to know. She may risk not telling you, she may not tell any man whom she wants to marry, and let him in for disgrace in the future, for any amount of undreamed-of trouble.... Ann is not Coats Penniman's daughter, Nickolas.... Edward, my brother, was Ann's father."

Judith was looking directly into Baird's eyes, and she saw how curiously they widened and grayed. She watched the blood drain from his face. In spite of the passions warring in her, Judith's love for Baird was a very complete thing. She suffered as she watched him. She felt that she had hurt him terribly.

Baird moved at last, looked down at the floor. "I can't realize it—at once—all it means—" he muttered.

Judith continued. "You see, Nickolas, Edward was only a boy, he was only twenty-one, and he was madly in love with Marian Penniman—and she with him. She was a very pretty girl, with Ann's same dangerous allure about her. You know the family quarrel? They met secretly—my father knew nothing about it, neither did Mr. Penniman—until it was too late. Edward was a nice boy, he loved Marian and he wanted to marry her. There was fearful trouble. Mr. Penniman and my father quarreled violently. My father swore that no Westmore should marry a Penniman, and Mr. Penniman was as determined that no daughter of his should owe anything to a Westmore. Edward would have run away with her if he could, but Mr. Penniman guarded his house with a shotgun, and between them all they married Marian to her cousin, Coats Penniman, just to save her good name. Coats loved her—he honestly wanted to help her, so it was a marriage only in name. It was a wretched business. It killed Marian, I believe, and it almost killed Edward." Judith's voice quivered with deep feeling. "Poor Edward!... And, in the end, he's sacrificed for his family's sins—"

Baird had heard Judith's explanation, his senses mechanically grasped what she said, while he pondered the thing which was of such tremendous import to him. When Judith had finished, he was still pale, but collected enough.

He looked very steadily at Judith when he asked his questions. "Did Garvin know Ann's relationship to him?"

"No. Mr. Penniman, Coats and Sue, and Edward and myself—we were the only ones who knew.... And Ben Brokaw knew. I think Ben guessed rather than knew—way back in the beginning. And from the beginning he's been like a father to Ann, I mean in feeling—much more so than Coats."

"And Ann didn't know?"

"Not till Edward told her. Ben says Edward told her, for the first time, on the afternoon of his death.... I don't know just what Edward had in mind for her—certainly to take her away from the farm, and perhaps to adopt her. I know he would never have made the truth known—he would guard the Westmore name too carefully for that."

There was coldness in Judith's assertion, a discounting of Ann. Judith Westmore had the southern aristocrat's pitiless contempt for the illegitimate. It was the heritage of the negro, the curse of the South, but why think about it? Nothing would have compelled her to countenance Ann.

Baird understood, but he made no comment. He prepared to go, and smiled when he took Judith's hand. "Thank you for telling me—you have done me a kindness. It's settled that we next meet in Paris, and happily, I hope.... By the way, I must have your address."

Judith gave it to him. She wished that she could keep him long enough to smooth away the last few painful moments. It had certainly been a shock to him, but it would be salutary. He was very cool-headed; he would think it over, and from all angles; and he would not go to Ann.

When Baird had circled the lawn and had reached the road below, he looked back. Judith still stood where he had left her, on the steps of the portico. She waved to him, and he lifted his hat. Then his eyes traveled over Westmore. It was a beautiful old place.... And the proudly arched brows of Edward Stratton Westmore, first Westmore of Westmore, had been transmitted unto Ann!

When he turned to open country, Baird's face was set and resolute.