The story was not a long one, though it omitted nothing: the morning fox-hunt and the identification of the new arrival at Damory Court as the owner of yesterday’s stalled motor; the afternoon raid on the jessamine, the conversation with John Valiant in the woods.

Mrs. Dandridge, gazing into the fire, listened without comment, but more than once Shirley saw her hands clasp themselves together and thought, too, that she seemed strangely pale. The swift and tragic sequel to that meeting was the hardest to tell, and as she ended she put up her hand to her shoulder, holding it hard. “It was horrible!” she said. Yet now she did not shudder. Strangely enough, the sense of loathing which had been surging over her at recurrent intervals ever since that hour in the wood, had vanished utterly!

She read the newspaper article aloud and her mother listened with an expression that puzzled her. When she finished, both were silent for a moment, then she asked, “You must have known his father, dearest; didn’t you?”

“Yes,” said Mrs. Dandridge after a pause. “I—knew his father.”

Shirley said no more, and facing each other in the candle-glow, across the spotless damask, they talked, as with common consent, of other things. She thought she had never seen her mother more brilliant. An odd excitement was flooding her cheek with red and she chatted and laughed as she had not done for years. Even Ranston rolled his eyes in appreciation, later confiding to Emmaline in the kitchen that “Mis’ Judith cert’n’y chipper ez er squ’rl dis evenin’. Reck’n she be breckin’ dat cane ovah some o’ ouah haids yit! What yo’ spos’n she say ’bout dem aryplanes? She ’clah she tickle tuh deff ter ride in one—yas’m. Say et soun’ lak er thrash’n-machine en look lak er debble-fish but she don’ keer. When she ride, she want tuh zip—yas she did! Dat’s jes’ whut Mis’ Judith say.”

But after dinner the gaiety and effervescence faded quickly and Mrs. Dandridge went early to her room. She mounted the stair with her arm thrown about Shirley’s pliant waist. At the window, where the balustrade turned, she paused to peer into the night. The air outside was moist and heavy with rose-scent.

“How alive they seem, Shirley,” she said, “—the roses. But the jessamine deserves its little hour.” At her door she kissed her, looking at her with a strange smile. “How curious,” she said, as if to herself, “that it should have happened, to-day!”

The reading-lamp had been lighted on her table. She drew a slim gold chain from the bosom of her dress and held to the light a little locket-brooch it carried. It was of black enamel, with a tiny laurel-wreath of pearls on one side encircling a single diamond. The other side was of crystal and covered a baby’s russet-colored curl. In her fingers it opened and disclosed a miniature at which she looked closely for a moment.

As she snapped the halves shut, her eye fell on the open page of a book that lay on the table in the circle of radiance. It was Lucile:

Her eyes turned restlessly about the room. It had been hers as a girl, for Rosewood had been the old Garland homestead. It seemed now all at once to be full of calling memories of her youth. She looked again at the page and turned the leaf:

She closed the book hastily and thrust it out of sight, beneath a magazine.

“How strange that it should have been to-day!” It had been on Shirley’s lips to question, but the door had closed, and she went slowly down-stairs. She sat a while thinking, but at length grew restless and began to walk to and fro across the floor, her hands clasped behind her head so that the cool air filled her flowing sleeves. In the hall she could hear the leisurely kon-kon—kon-kon of the tall clock. The evening outside was exquisitely still and the metallic monotone was threaded with the airy fiddle-fiddle of crickets in the grass and punctuated with the rain-glad cloap of a frog.

Presently, with the mellow whirrings that accompany the movements of such antiques, the ancient timepiece struck ten. At the sound she threw a thin scarf over her shoulders and stole out to the porch. Its deep odorous shadow was crossed by oblongs of lemon-colored light from the windows. Before the kitchen door Ranston’s voice was humming huskily:

accompanied by the soft alto of Aunt Judy the cook.

Shirley stepped lightly down to the wet grass. Looking back, she could see her mother’s lighted blind. All around the ground was splotched with rose-petals, looking in the squares of light like bloody rain. Beyond the margin of this brightness all was in darkness, for the moon was not yet risen, and a light damp breeze passed in a slow rhythm as if the earth were breathing moistly in its sleep. Somewhere far away sounded the faint inquiring woo-o-o of an owl and in the wet branches of a walnut tree a pigeon moved murmurously.

She skimmed the lawn and ran a little way down the lane. A shuffling sound presently fell on her ear.

“Is that you, Unc’ Jefferson?” she called softly.

“Yas’m!” The footsteps came nearer. “Et’s me, Miss Shirley.” He tittered noiselessly, and she could see his bent form vibrating in the gloom. “Yo’ reck’n Ah done fergit?”

“No, indeed. I knew you wouldn’t do that. How is he?”

“He right much bettah,” he replied in the same guarded tone. “Doctah he say he be all right in er few days, on’y he gotter lay up er while. Dat was er ugly nip he got f’om dat ’spisable reptyle. Ah reck’n de moc’sins is wuss’n dem ar Floridy yallargaters.”

“Do you think there can be any others about the grounds?”

“No’m. Dey mos’ly keeps ter de ma’shlan’ en on’y runs whah de undah-bresh ez thick. I gwineter fix dat ter-morrow. Mars’ Valiant he tell me ter grub et all out en make er bon-fiah ob it.”

“That’s right, Unc’ Jefferson. Good night, and thank you for coming.”

She started back to the house, when his voice stopped her.

“Mis Shirley, yo’ don’ keer ef de ole man geddahs two er three ob dem roses? Seems lak young mars’ moughty fon’ ob dem. He got one in er glass but et’s mos’ daid now.”

“Wait a minute,” she said, and disappeared in the darkness, returning quickly with a handful which she put in his grasp.

“There!” she whispered, and slipped back through the perfumed dark.

An hour later she stood in the cozy stillness of her bedroom. It was hung in silvery blue with curtains of softly figured shadow-cloth having a misty design of mauve and pink hydrangeas. A tilted mirror on the draped dressing-table had a dark mahogany frame set in upright posts carved in a heavy pattern of grape-leaves. Two candles in silver candlesticks stood before it, their friendly light winking from the fittings of the dark bed, from the polished surface of the desk in the corner and from the old piece of brocade stretched above the mantel, worked like shredded silver cobwebs.

She threw off her gown, slipped into a soft loose robe of maize-colored silk and stood before the small glass. She pulled out the amber pins and drew her wonderful hair on either side of her face, looking out at her reflection like a mermaid from between the rippling waves of a moon-golden sea. She gazed a long critical minute from eyes whose blue seemed now almost black.

At last she turned, and seating herself at the desk, took from it a diary. She scanned the pages at random, her eyes catching lines here and there. “A good run to-day. Betty and Judge Chalmers and the Pendleton boys. My fourth brush this season.” A frown drew itself across her brows, and she turned the page. “One of the hounds broke his leg, and I gave him to Rickey.” ... “Chilly Lusk to dinner to-day, after swimming the Loring Rapid.”

She bit her lip, turned abruptly to the new page and took up her pen. “This morning a twelve mile run to Damory Court,” she wrote. “This afternoon went for cape jessamines.” There she paused. The happenings and sensations of that day would not be recorded. They were unwritable.

She laid down her pen and put her forehead on her clasped hands. How empty and inane these entries seemed beside this rich and eventful twenty-four hours just passed! What had she been doing a year ago to-day? she wondered. The lower drawer of the desk held a number of slim diaries like the one before her. She pulled it out, took up the last-year’s volume and opened it.

“Why,” she said in surprise, “I got jessamine for mother this very same day last year!” she pondered frowning, then reached for a third and a fourth. From these she looked up, startled. That date in her mother’s calendar called for cape jessamines. What was the fourteenth of May to her?

She bent a slow troubled gaze about her. The room had been hers as a child. She seemed suddenly back in that childhood, with her mother bending over her pillow and fondling her rebellious hair. When the wind cried for loneliness out in the dark she had sung old songs to her that had seemed to suit a windy night: Mary of the Wild Moor, and I am Dreaming Now of Hallie. Sad songs! Even in those pinafore years Shirley had vaguely realized that pain lay behind the brave gay mask. Was there something—some event—that had caused that dull-colored life and unfulfilment? And was to-day, perhaps, its anniversary?

Her thought darted to her father who had died before her birth, on whose gray hair had been set the greenest laurels of the Civil War. She had always been deeply proud of his military record—had never read his name on a page of Confederate history without a new thrill. But she had never thought of him and her mother as actors in a passionate love-romance. Their portraits hung together in the living-room down-stairs: the grave middle-aged man with graying hair, and the pale proud girl with the strange shadow in the dark eyes. The canvases had been painted in the year of her mother’s marriage. The same sadness had been in her face then. And their marriage and his death had both fallen in midwinter. No, this May date was not connected with him!

“Dearest, dearest!” whispered Shirley, and a slow tear drew its shining track down her cheek. “Is there something I’ve never known? Is there?”