She loitered on the step, even after the sound of wheels grew dim. Her eyes feasted on the golden river and her ears caught the pleasant notes of insects and night birds; but her mind was alert and practical to the moment. Out of the corner of her eye she could see Howard, standing by the chimney-piece and leaning upon it in a handsome and familiar attitude. He could not have looked more at home if he had owned the house. A sense of anger stirred in her.

“If he were old I could understand it. Old men naturally want a snug home to die in!” Then, as was habitual with her, amusement took the place of indignation. “To-morrow I’ll hang a crape bow and streamers between my shoulder-blades and go my way in lonesome peace.”

Thinking that she might as well have it over with, she went indoors slowly. She looked quizzically at Howard as she said, with pointed emphasis on the degree of relationship:

“Well, Mr. Fifth-Cousin-by-Marriage, what is this legend about my bolts and bars? I shall leave my windows open as usual, I suppose.” “Oh! that was an excuse, of course—and a thin one. Dear Rosamond, I wonder if you have any idea why I have lingered?”

His assumption of tenderness did not please her. She sank into the big chair by the settee, making herself comfortable with cushions and footstool. If she must hear another proposal of marriage that day, she would at least hear it at her ease.

“I’ve seen it taking shape, but I did hope you wouldn’t,” she said shortly.

“Wouldn’t what?” in surprise, for no indication of her humour had reached him.

“Propose. That is what you are about to do, isn’t it?” She let him see that she felt a malicious enjoyment in his embarrassment.

Howard had been totally unprepared for her sally and he resented being made to look foolish; but, after the first hesitation, he decided to go on, according to his plan. Rosamond must marry; if she did not know that she must marry, he would soon convince her that a prolonged and colourful widowhood, with honour, could not be her portion in Roseborough. She must marry, and where could she find a more suitable husband than himself? (Like Judge Giffen and Mr. Albert Andrews, he also considered himself her inevitable choice.)

“Perhaps I ought hardly to go so far without more preparation; but—er—Rosamond, jealousy of your friendship with the musical newcomer to Roseborough has made me seem precipitate. But I have desired to say all this to you for a long time.”

He was young, magnetic, and of her own race, and suddenly her longing for comradeship went out to him.

“Oh, Wilton,” she almost pleaded, “I don’t want to marry you. I won’t say that I never mean to marry, because some one might come. Yet, if he were interesting enough to love, why would he ever come to Roseborough? No, I couldn’t love Dr. Frei. But I wish I could marry the song of his fiddle and be blown off on the wind with my bridegroom a thousand leagues from here.”

“My dear girl, have you not lived happily here, where you are beloved by all?”

She made a wry face.

“Can’t even you understand me a little? You’re young.”

“I wish to understand you, above everything.”

“Can’t you guess what it’s been like, underneath the—the—velvet surface? When I was a poor young girl in Poplars Vale I longed for a finished education and a high station. Hibbert Mearely was fifty-three when my ingenuous countenance met his collector’s eye. He put me here—as a living ornament—among his paintings and his books and antiques where everything is old and stable and has a set value. Look at the chairs; when you sit down, you feel you are settled there for life—and will not move again till some one carries you to the churchyard. I came here so proudly—to be the wife of such a fine, distinguished gentleman. I thought it would be a wonderful life—with all this,” she waved her hands to indicate the furnishings of Mr. Mearely’s museum. “But it wasn’t. It was dreadful. In its heart, Roseborough still regards me as an alien and an upstart. My mother once sold butter. They remember that. They are waiting for a chance to rub it in. Now that my crape is two years behind me, the three or four bachelors and the five widowers are eager to pounce on me with marriage. And all the women are ready to destroy me with gossip.”

She ceased abruptly, holding out her hands to him with a plea for help, for friendship and an open door of escape that should not bear the sign “Matrimony” on the centre panel. Howard took her hands and bent over them, giving her the benefit, too, of his magnetic and confident smile. He saw in her appeal exactly the opportunity he needed.

“That, partly, is what hastens my offer. Gossip is inevitable. Why not forestall it? As a matter of fact, a young woman cannot remain alone—more especially if she is a widow, and beautiful.” He kissed her hand. “And rich,” she said dryly—as if completing his sentence for him—and withdrew her hand.

“I—er—I hope you do not do me that injustice.” He spoke with hurt dignity.

“Oh, certainly not,” she answered flippantly. “That is always understood in offers of this kind.”

Howard was becoming angry. He told himself that he had not given up Mabel, whom he loved, and done the butter-maker’s daughter the honour to offer her himself in marriage, in order to let her insult him as the mood swayed her. He spoke calmly but with the accents of a superior.

“You are cynical, my dear. Are you worldly-wise enough to realize that Roseborough will make you marry?”

She walked away from him across the room.

“Yes, I know it. One link after another in the chain about me till I’m crushed flat,” desperately—“and old—old!” A sob escaped her. She picked up the pack of cards and tossed them loose over the table, as if her last chance of happiness were proved no more than bits of pasteboard and she had cast it from her as worthless. Wilton, thinking her agitation in his favour, went to her.

“Perhaps,” she said, eyeing him resentfully, “it might as well be you as any one.”

“Might it not better be I than any one?” he demanded, capturing her hand again. “Yes, I suppose so,” she replied, considering it impersonally. “You’re young.”

“Then it is ‘yes’?” ardently.

She pulled her hand away and came out of her abstraction.

“Good gracious, no!” bluntly. “Not so fast, cousin. I am much too sleepy to decide anything so important to-night. Besides, to-night I am in love with the song of the fiddle. And you are not that song!” She sighed.

“A much more substantial lover,” he answered laughingly.

“Stupid thing!” she thought. “I suppose you think your ‘substantial’ person has more power to stir me than the echoes of Tschaikowsky!”

“And when?” he began.

“Do say good-night, like a good fellow. I am so tired. I want to go to bed at once—and sleep forever.” She walked out to the verandah, compelling him to follow. “I’ll think you over.”

“I hope you’ll think kindly,” he said, with a softness in his voice and his eyes that he had not shown her before. But Mabel could have told her how one woman, at least, yearned to him because of that note in his gamut, for which he deserved as little credit as for the shape of his nose.

“Oh, Wilton! I am so—so tired!” Her lip quivered. “Nothing but this same narrow little life, over and over—daily—yearly! Oh! Look at the river, running away so swiftly and freely; it is the only thing that ever came to Roseborough and got away again! Every time I look at it, I think it is laughing at me. It laughed at me down there in Poplars Vale. It mocks me more cruelly here, with its swift journeying to—somewhere.”

Turning to him, in her irrepressible longing for sympathy, she saw that he did not understand her in the least, but was studying how he might best impress her by a loverlike pose.

“I’ll think you over,” she promised airily. “Good-night. Go, before I fall asleep at your feet,” she added, with the rather cruel intimation that there was nothing about his wooing which could conquer her boredom. By a quick, vigorous handshake she prevented him from kissing her fingers again. She caught up his cap and gloves from the settle and pressed them into his arms. He went out, smiling; for he believed this haste to be rid of him was in reality a tribute to his irresistible powers of fascination.

“Good-night, dear Rosamond. Good-night. Sleep soundly,” he called from below the wall, as his dog-cart went by.

Rosamond made no reply. She stood by the rail, looking at the “velvety star-veined night” and the river. The noise of wheels died down; the only sound was the chirring of crickets. She turned off the verandah light. She came into the room and went about, methodically putting out all the individual lamps but one. This she left on for a purpose, it appeared; because, presently, she found a little leather-bound book on the flower-stand by the fireplace, and slid up into a corner of the settee with it. In settling herself she almost knocked a paper off the arm-piece.

“Dear me,” she said aloud. “The Judge’s sacred Digest! How could he have forgotten it? I suppose Mrs. Witherby’s hysterics must have put it out of his head.”

She glanced at it idly and her eye was caught by the first column.

“Corinne’s runaway prince!” She smiled, and began to read. When she had perused the story she laid the Digest aside, musing on the Royal Highness whose heart was so oddly in tune with her own.

“Eccentric—romantic—artistic,” she repeated. “Fond of wandering about incognito—and entering humble dwellings—and making friends. Making friends.” She dwelt wistfully on the last words.

The little copy of Browning opened naturally at the place she sought; and she need not have opened it at all, for she knew by heart the lines she loved. This, it may be pointed out, was not her late master’s “first edition,” autographed by Princess Victoria for sale at the Indian Famine Relief Bazaar. She had bought this copy for herself and loved it for its contents, not for its binding nor for a scrawl on its fly-leaf. Softly, she said the lines:

She laid the book on the stand and sat quite still and silent for some time, then she murmured:

“We’re all alike, the queen and I, Corinne and her runaway prince. I wonder if all the world is longing just for—something different?”

The large room was almost dark; its only light came from the one little lamp on the mantel, which cast its dim halo upon her, and from the open door of the music room. Outside, the moon, the stars, and the river shed their mystic radiance over and through the slumbering valley.

“If there could only have been one word from some one—one note out of the earth or the sky—to promise me something....”

Clear, mellow, and resonant, one note rang out from the tower and rolled like an invisible golden wheel up the hills and down the valley. Rosamond sat up, straining her ears.

“The tower bell!” she whispered. “It rang!—once! And it never rings after six!”

The sound was not repeated, and, after a time, she began to ask herself if perhaps she had not nodded for a second and dreamed that she heard the bell. She rose and went into the dining room to turn off the lights. Then she put out the little lamp on the chimney-piece and passed into the music room where she busied herself in replacing the Tschaikowsky album in the music rack and in closing the piano. The last duty here was to turn out the tall stand-lamp.

“I wonder did I dream that bell?” she queried, as she came back to the living room.

If she had not been wondering so absorbedly about the bell, she might have heard another and slighter noise much closer at hand. That noise was the sound of a light-footed creature terminating a leap in the centre of her verandah. Just prior to that sound, a man’s figure had been silhouetted against the moonlit sky, as he climbed nimbly and stood an instant on the railing.