FTER the dance Frank Hillhouse took Dolly home in one of the drenched and bespattered hacks. The Barclay residence was one of the best-made and largest in town. It was an old-style Southern frame-house, painted white, and had white-columned verandas on two sides. It was in the edge of the town, and had an extensive lawn in front and almost a little farm behind.

Dolly's mother had never forgotten that she was once a girl herself, and she took the most active interest in everything pertaining to Dolly's social life. On occasions like the one just described she found it impossible to sleep till her daughter returned, and then she slipped up-stairs, and made the girl tell all about it while she was disrobing. To-night she was more alert and wide-awake than usual. She opened the front door for Dolly and almost stepped on the girl's heels as she followed her up-stairs.

“Was it nice?” she asked.

“Yes, very,” Dolly replied. Reaching her room, she turned up the low-burning lamp, and, standing before a mirror, began to take some flowers out of her hair. Mrs. Barclay sat down on the edge of the high-posted mahogany bed and raised one of her bare feet and held it in her hand. She was a thin woman with iron-gray hair, and about fifty years of age. She looked as if she were cold; but, for reasons of her own, she was not willing for Dolly to remark it.

“Who was there?” she asked.

“Oh, everybody.”

“Is that so? I thought a good many would stay away because it was a bad night; but I reckon they are as anxious to go as we used to be. Then you all did have the hacks?”

“Yes, they had the hacks.” There was a pause, during which one pair of eyes was fixed rather vacantly on the image in the mirror; the other pair, full of impatient inquiry, rested alternately on the image and its maker.

“I don't believe you had a good time,” broke the silence, in a rising, tentative tone.

“Yes, I did, mother.”

“Then what's the matter with you?” Mrs. Barclay's voice rang with impatience. “I never saw you act like you do to-night, never in my life.”

“I didn't know anything was wrong with me, mother.”

“You act queer; I declare you do,” asserted Mrs. Barclay. “You generally have a lot to say. Have you and Frank had a falling out?”

Dolly gave her shoulders a sudden shrug of contempt.

“No, we got along as well as we ever did.”

“I thought maybe he was a little mad because you wouldn't dance to-night; but surely he's got enough sense to see that you oughtn't to insult brother Dill-beck that way when he's visiting our house and everybody knows what he thinks about dancing.”

“No, he thought I did right about it,” said Dolly.

“Then what in the name of common-sense is the matter with you, Dolly? You can' t pull the wool over my eyes, and you needn't try it.”

Dolly faced about suddenly.

“I reckon you 'll sit there all night unless I tell you all about it,” she said, sharply. “Mother, Alan Bishop was there.”

“You don't say!”

“Yes, and asked me to let him take me to church to-morrow evening.”

“Oh, he did?”

“Yes, and as I didn't want father to insult him, I—”

“You told him what your pa said?”

“No, I just told him father didn't want me to receive him any more. Heaven knows, that was enough.”

“Well, that was the best thing for you to do.” Mrs. Barclay took a deep breath, as if she were inhaling a delicious perfume. “It's much better than to have him plunge in here some day and have your father break out like he does in his rough way. What did Alan say?”

“He said very little; but he looked it. You ought to have seen him. Frank came up just about that time and invited me to have some ice-cream, and I had to leave him. He was as white as a sheet. He had made an engagement with me to sit out a dance, and he didn't come in the room again till that dance was called, and then he didn't even mention it. He acted so peculiarly, I could see it was nearly killing him, but he wouldn't let me bring up the subject again. I came near doing it; but he always steered round it.”

“He's a sensible young man,” declared Mrs. Barclay. “Any one can see that by looking at him. He's not responsible for his father's foolhardy venture, but it certainly leaves him in a bad fix as a marrying man. He's had bad luck, and he must put up with the consequences. There are plenty of girls who have no money or prospects who would be glad to have him, but—”

“Mother,” broke in Dolly, as if she had been listening to her own troubled thoughts rather than her mother's words; “he didn't act as if he wanted to see me alone. The other couples who had engagements to talk during that dance were sitting in windows and out-of-the-way corners, but he kept me right where I was, and was as carefully polite as if we had just been introduced. I was sorry for him and mad at the same time. I could have pulled his ears.”

“He's sensible, very sensible,” said Mrs. Barclay, in a tone of warm admiration. “A man like that ought to get along, and I reckon he will do well some day.”

“But, mother,” said Dolly, her rich, round voice rising like a wave and breaking in her throat, “he may never think about me any more.”

“Well, that really would be best, dear, under the circumstances.”

“Best?” Dolly blurted out. “How can you say that, when—when—”

“Dolly, you are not really foolish about him, are you?” Mrs. Barclay's face dropped into deeper seriousness.

Dolly looked away and was silent for a moment; then she faltered: “I don't know, mother, I—I'm afraid if I keep on feeling like I do now I 'll never get over it.”

“Ah, but you 'll not keep on feeling like you do now,” consoled the older woman. “Of course, right now, just after seeing how hard he took it, you will kind o' sympathize with him and want to help him; but that will all pass away. I remember when I was about your age I had a falling out with Will Despree—a young man my father didn't like because his grandfather had been an overseer. And, do you know, I thought I would actually kill myself. I refused to eat a bite and threatened to run away with Will. To this day I really don't know what I would have done if your grandfather hadn't scared him away with a shot-gun. Will kept writing notes to me. I was afraid to answer them, but my father got hold of one and went after him on a fast horse. Will's family heard what was up and they kept him out in the swamp for a few days, and then they sent him to Texas. The whole Despree family took it up and talked scand'lous about us.”

“And you soon got over it, mother?” asked Dolly, almost in a tone of dismay.

“Well,” said Mrs. Barclay, reflectively, “Will acted the fool so terribly; he wasn't out in Texas three months before he sent back a marked paper with an article in it about his engagement to the daughter of a rich man who, we found out afterwards, used to keep a livery-stable; then I reckon hardly any girl would keep caring for a boy when his folks was telling such lies about her family.”

Dolly was staring studiously at the speaker.

“Mother,” she asked, “don't you believe in real love?”

Mrs. Barclay laughed as if highly amused. “I believe in a different sort to the puppy love I had for that boy. Then after that there was another young man that I thought more of, if anything, than I did of Will; but he was as poor as Job's turkey, and my folks was all crazy for me 'n' your pa, who I'd never seen, to get married. I held out against the idea, just like you are doing with Frank, I reckon; but when your pa come with his shiny broadcloth coat and spotted silk vest—no, it was satin, I think, with red spots on it—and every girl in town was crazy to catch him, and there was no end of reports about the niggers he owned and his high connections—well, as I say, it wasn't a week before I was afraid he'd see Joe Tinsley and hear about me 'n' him. My father was in for the match from the very jump, and so was your pa's folks. He put up at our house with his nigger servant and didn't want to go about town much. I reckon I was pleased to have him pick me out, and so we soon fixed it up. Lordy, he only had to mention Joe Tinsley to me after we got married to make me do anything he wanted. To this day he throws him up to me, for Joe never did amount to anything. He tried to borrow money from your pa after you was born. The neighbors had to feed his children.”

“But you loved father, didn't you?” Dolly breathed, in some relief over what she thought was coming.

“Well, I can' t say I did,” said Mrs. Barclay. “We had a terrible time getting used to one another's ways. You see, he'd waited a good while, and was some older than I was. After a while, though, we settled down, and now I'm awful glad I let my father manage for me. You see, what your pa had and what my father settled on me made us comfortable, and if a couple is that it's a sight more than the pore ones are.”

Dolly stood before her mother, close enough to touch her. Her face wore an indescribable expression of dissatisfaction with what she had heard.

“Mother, tell me one thing,” she said. “Did you ever let either of those boys—the two that you didn't marry, I mean—kiss you?”

Mrs. Barclay stared up at her daughter for an instant and then her face broke into a broad smile of genuine amusement. She lowered her head to her knee and laughed out.

“Dolly Barclay, you are such a fool!” she said, and then she laughed again almost immoderately, her face in her lap.

“I know what that means,” said Dolly, in high disgust. “Mother, I don't think you can do me any good. You'd better go to bed.”

Mrs. Barclay rose promptly.

“I think I'd better, too,” she said. “It makes your pa awful mad for me to sit up this way. I don't want to hear him rail out like he always does when he catches me at it.”

After her mother had gone, Dolly sat down on her bed. “She never was in love,” she told herself. “Never, never, never! And it is a pity. She never could have talked that way if she had really loved anybody as much as—” But Dolly did not finish what lay on her tongue. However, when she had drawn the covers up over her the cold tears rose in her eyes and rolled down on her pillow as she thought of Alan Bishop's brave and dignified suffering.

“Poor fellow!” she said. “Poor, dear Alan!”