In the darkest corner of the quietest room in the club, Sively found his cousin gloomily smoking a cigar, a bottle of brandy on a table near him, and a copy of Luke King's paper on the floor at his feet. As he looked up his eyes had a shifting glare in them, and there was an air of utter dejection on him, though, on recognizing his cousin, he made a valiant effort to appear at ease.

"Oh, you are back, are you?" he said, awkwardly, flicking the ashes of his cigar over a tray.

"Yes, just in, old boy, and I've got my horses out for a spin to the Driving Club. Come along. The whole town is out on wheels; the afternoon is perfect. The idea of your sitting cooped up here, in smoke thick enough to cut with an axe, when you ought to be filling your lungs with ozone and enjoying life!"

Langdon hesitated, but it was evident that he could formulate no reasonable excuse for declining the invitation, and so he reluctantly gave in. "Let me get my hat," he said, and together they strolled down the wide entrance-hall to the hat-rack.

"I felt rather uneasy when I missed you at my rooms," Sively remarked, as they were approaching the trap at the door. "Pomp could give no account of you, and I didn't know but what you'd skipped out for home. Have a good time while I was away?"

"Oh yes, yes," Chester answered, as he got into the vehicle and began to adjust the lap-robes about him. "I got along all right. You see, old man, I'm sort of getting on the social retired-list. Living in the country, where we have few formalities, has turned me somewhat against your teas, dinners, and dances. I never go without feeling out of it somehow. You Atlanta men seem to know how to combine business and society pretty well; but, having no business when I'm here, I get sick of doing the other thing exclusively."

"Oh, I see," said Sively, who was too deeply versed in human nature to be misled.

As they sped along the smooth asphalt pavement of Peachtree Street, dodging trolley-cars and passing or meeting open vehicles filled with pleasure-seekers, Sively's hat and arm were in continual motion bowing to friends and acquaintances. The conversation languished. Sively found it very difficult to keep it going as he noted the deep lines of care which marked his cousin's face. He was quite sure something of a very serious nature had happened to Langdon, and his sympathies were deeply stirred.

After twenty minutes' brisk driving, they reached the club-house and entered the throng of fashionably dressed men and women distributed about at the numerous refreshment-tables under the trees. The club was on a slight elevation, and below them stretched the beautiful greensward of the extensive Exposition grounds. Several of the liveried servants, recognizing Sively, approached and offered chairs at their respective tables, but, sensing his cousin's desire not to be thrown with others, he led the way through the laughing and chattering assemblage to a quiet table in a little smoking-room quite in the rear of the building.

"There," he smiled, "this will suit you better, I know."

"Yes, I think it will, if it's all the same to you," Chester admitted, with a breath of relief. "The Lord only knows what I'd talk about out there in that chattering gang."

Sively ordered cigars, and, when the waiter had gone for them, he said, lightly: "No more liquor for you to-day, my boy. You hold your own all right, but you are too nervous to take any more."

"Nervous? Do you think so? Do I look it?" Chester asked.

"Oh yes, a little," said Sively. He was taking a bunch of cigars from the waiter, and, when he had signed his name to the accompanying slip of paper, he said, "Harry, pull the door to after you, and see that we are not disturbed."

"Certainly, sir."

Langdon, with widening eyes, watched the negro as he went out and closed the door, then he glanced at his cousin inquiringly.

"I want to be alone with you, my boy," Sively said, with ill-assumed ease. "You can trust me, you know, and—well, the truth is, my boy, I want to know what you are in trouble about."

"Me? Good gracious!"

"Oh, don't begin that!" Sively said, firmly, as he struck a match and held it to the end of his cigar. "I won't stand it. You can't keep your feelings from me. At first, when Pomp told me about your not going out to those affairs when I was away, I thought your father had thrown you over for good and all, but it isn't that. My uncle couldn't do it, anyway. You are in trouble, my boy; what is it?"

Langdon flushed and stared defiantly across the table into the fixed eyes of his cousin for a moment, and then he looked down.

"No, my father is all right," he said. "He's found out about the horse, but he didn't take it so very hard. In fact, he went to Darley and bought him back for only a slight advance on what I sold him for. He is worried about me, and writes for me to come on home."

"Then, as I supposed, it is not your father," said Sively.

There was a pause. Langdon, with bloodless fingers, nervously broke his cigar half in two. He took another and listlessly struck a match, only to let its flame expire without using it.

"What's the trouble, my boy?" pursued Sively. "I want to befriend you if I can. I'm older than you."

"Well, I am in trouble," Langdon said, simply. Then, in a low tone, and with frequent pauses, he told all about his acquaintance with Virginia. Once started, he left out no detail, extending his confidence till it had included a humble confession even of his humiliation by Ann Boyd and the girl's bitter words of contempt a few days later. "Then I had to come away," Langdon finished, with a sigh that was a whispered groan. "I couldn't stand it. I thought the change, the life and excitement down here, would make me forget, but it's worse than ever. I'm in hell, old man—a regular hell."

Sively leaned back in his chair. There was an expression of supreme disgust about his sensitive nose and mouth, and his eyes burned with indignant, spirit-fed fires.

"Great God!" he exclaimed; "and it was that girl—that particular one—Jane Hemingway's daughter!"

"You've seen her, then?" Langdon said, in awakening surprise.

"Seen her? Great Heavens, of course, I've seen her, and, now that I know all this, her sweet, young face will never go out of my mind—never as long as life is in me."

"I don't exactly see—I don't understand—" Langdon began, but his cousin interrupted him.

"I had a talk with her one day," he said, feelingly. "I had been hunting with your gun and dogs, and stopped at her mother's house to get a drink of water. Virginia was the only one at home, and she brought it to me in the little porch. I've met thousands of women, Langdon, but her beauty, grace, intelligence, and dazzling purity affected me as I never was before. I am old enough to be her father, but do you know what I thought as I sat there and talked to her? I thought that I'd give every dollar I had for the love and faith of such a girl—to leave this rotten existence here and settle down there in the mountains to earn my living by the sweat of my brow. It was almost the only silly dream I ever had, but it was soon over. A thousand times since that day, in the midst of all this false show and glitter, my mind has gone back to that wonderful girl. She'd read books I'd never had time to open, and talked about them as freely and naturally as I would about things of everyday life. No doubt she was famished for what all women, good or bad, love—the admiration of men—and so she listened eagerly to your slick tongue. Oh, I know what you said, and exactly how you said it. You've inherited that gift, my boy, but you've inherited something—perhaps from your mother—something that your father never had in his make-up—you've inherited a capacity for remorse, self-contempt, the throes of an outraged conscience. I'm a man of the world—I don't go to church, I play cards, I race horses, I've gone all the gaits—but I know there is something in most men which turns their souls sick when they consciously commit crime. Crime!—yes, that's it—don't stop me. I used a strong word, but it must go. There are men who would ten thousand times rather shoot a strong, able-bodied man dead in his tracks than beguile a young girl to the brink of doom (of all ways) as you did—blinding her to her own danger by the holy desire to save her mother's life, pulling her as it were by her very torn and bleeding heart-strings. God!"

"Oh, don't—don't make it any worse than it is!" Langdon groaned. "What's done's done, and, if I'm down in the blackest depths of despair over it, what's the use to kick me? I'm helpless. Do you know what I actually thought of doing this morning? I actually lay in bed and planned my escape. I wanted to turn on the gas, but I knew it would never do its work in that big, airy room."

"Oh, don't be a fool, Langdon!" Sively said, suddenly pulled around. "Never think of such a thing again. When a man that is a man does a wrong, there is only one thing for him to do, and that is to set it right."

"Set it right? But how?" Langdon cried, almost eagerly.

"Why, there are several ways to make a stab at it, anyway," Sively said; "and that is better than wiping your feet on a gentle creature and then going off and smoking a gas-pipe. What I want to know is this: do you love that girl, really and genuinely love her?"

"Why, I think I do," said Langdon; "in fact, I now know it; if I didn't, why should I be here miserable enough to die about what has happened and her later treatment of me?"

"I couldn't take your diagnosis of your particular malady." Sively puffed thoughtfully at his cigar. "You'd be the last person, really, that could decide on that. There are some men in the world who can't tell the difference between love and passion, and they are led to the altar by one as often as the other. But the passion-led man has walked through the pink gates of hell. When his temporary desire has been fed, he'll look into the face of his bride with absolute loathing and contempt. She'll be too pure, as a rule, to understand the chasm between them, but she will know that for her, at least, marriage is a failure. Now, if I thought you really loved that pretty girl—if I thought you really were man enough to devote the rest of your days to blotting from her memory the black events of that night; if I thought you'd go to her with the hot blood of hell out of your veins, and devote yourself to winning her just as some young man on her own social level would do, paying her open and respectful attentions, declaring your honorable intentions to her relatives and friends—if I thought you were man enough to do that, in spite of the opposition of your father and mother, then I'd glory in your spunk, and I'd think more of you, my poor boy, than I ever have in all my life."

Langdon leaned forward. He had felt his cousin's contemptuous words less for the hope they embodied. "Then you think if I did that, she might—"

"I don't know what she'd do," Sively broke in. "I only know that when you finally saw her after that night and made no declarations of honorable intentions, that you simply emphasized the cold-blooded insult of what had already happened. She saw in your following her up only a desire to repeat the conduct which had so nearly entrapped her. My boy, I am not a mean judge of women, and I am afraid you have simply lost that girl forever. She has lowered herself, as she perhaps looks at it, in the eyes of another woman—the one who saved her—and her young eyes have been torn open to things she was too pure and unsuspecting even to dream of. However, all her life she has heard of the misfortune of this Mrs. Boyd, and she now realizes only too vividly what she has escaped. It might take you years to restore her confidence—to prove to her that you love her for herself alone, but if I stood in your shoes I'd do it if it took me a lifetime. She is worth it, my boy. In fact, I'm afraid she is—now pardon me for being so blunt—but I'm afraid she is superior to you in intellect. She struck me as being a most wonderful woman for her age. Given opportunity, she'd perhaps out-strip you. It is strange that she has had so little attention paid to her. Has she never had an admirer before?"

Langdon exhaled a deep breath before replying. "That is something I've been worried about," he admitted. "From little things she has dropped I imagine this same Luke King used to be very fond of her before he left for the West. They have met since he got back, and I'm afraid she—"

"Good gracious! that puts another face on the business," said Sively. "I don't mean any disparagement to you, but if—if there ever was any understanding between them, and he has come back such a success, why, it isn't unlikely that you'd have a rival worth giving attention to. A man of that sort rarely ever makes a mistake in marrying. If he is after that girl, you've got an interesting fight ahead of you—that is, if you intend to buck against him. Now, I see, I've made you mad."

"Do you think I'd let a man of his birth and rearing thwart me?" Langdon cried—"a mountain cracker, a clodhopper, an uncouth, unrefined—"

"Stop! you are going too far," said Sively, quickly. "Our old idea that refinement can only come from silk-lined cradles is about exploded. It seems to me that refinement is as natural as a love of art, music, or poetry. And not only has that chap got refinement of a decided sort, but he's got a certain sort of pride that makes him step clean over a reverence for our defunct traditions. When he meets a scion of the old aristocracy his clear eye doesn't waver as he stares steadily into the face as if to see if the old rÉgime has left a fragment of brains there worth inspecting. Oh, he gets along all right in society! The Holts had him at the club reception and dinner the other night, and our best women were actually asking to be introduced to him, and—"

"But why are you telling all this stuff to me?" Langdon thundered, as he rose angrily to signify that he was ready to go.

"Why do I?" Sively said, pacifically. "Because you've simply got to know the genuine strength of your rival, if he is that, and you have to cross swords with him. If the fellow really intends to win that girl, he will perhaps display a power in the undertaking that you never saw. I'd as soon fight a buzz-saw with bare hands as to tackle him in a fight for a woman's love. Oh, I've got started, my boy, and I'll have to reel it all off, and be done with it. There is one thing you may get mad and jealous enough to do—that is, in case you are this fellow King's rival—"

"What do you mean? What did you start to say?" Langdon glared down at his cousin.

"Why, you might—I say might—fall low enough to try to use the poor girl's little indiscretion against her. But if you do, my boy, I'll go back on you. I'll do it as sure as there is a God in heaven. I wish you luck with her, but it all depends on you. If you will be a man, you may be happy in the end, get a beautiful, trusting wife, and wipe the mire off your soul which is making you so miserable. Go straight home and set about it in the right way. Begin with a humble proposal of marriage. That will show your intentions at the outset. Now, let's get out in the open air."

They walked through the gay throng again to the carriage, and as they were getting in Langdon said, almost cheerfully: "I'm going to take your advice. I know I love her, honestly and truly, for I want her with every nerve in my body. I haven't slept a single night through since the thing happened. I've simply been crazy."

"Well, the whole thing lies with you," said Sively. "The girl must have cared something for you at one time, and you must recover your lost place in her estimation. A humble proposal of marriage will, in my judgment, soften her more than anything else. It will be balm to her wounded pride, too, and you may win. You've got a fair chance. Most poor mountain girls would be flattered by the opportunity to marry a man above them in social position, and she may be that way. Be a man, and pay no attention to your father's objections. When the proper time comes, I'll talk to him."