The top was thrown back. A girl whom she had known as one knows some neighbors all the years of her life was in it. Her slim figure showed exquisitely against the linings of the carriage, her rich furs framed a face delicate and spirited as a miniature, her wide hat and long black plumes brought out every shifting hue of her golden hair and rosy cheeks. She was known in Richmond and New York as a beauty; she was known in Charlottesville as a "students' belle." A man like her attendant was a godsend to her, already wearied, as she was, of too easily pleasing. She leaned toward him impressively. It was Lawson. His face was ruddy and his eyes alight. His bays were trotting gloriously. The girl he was driving was more than interesting, she was daring. He looked deep into her eyes. The girl's bow to some one startled him. He turned to give Frances an astonished glance as she came around the slight curve into sight. But Frances had seen the picture and its atmosphere. It was not love, and that she did not know, but it wore its guise charmingly. Frances heard the moaning of the winds across the links and it held a deeper note, a note of desolation, fading glories, and swift-coming night. The library looked doubly cheerful when she was within doors. The coals in the grate were glowing red, the heavy curtains of the windows were partly drawn showing but a breadth of white lace between and through its film a glimpse of the darkening quadrangle. There was a savory smell of coffee kitchenward, as Susan came in. "Yo' pa done sont a message," she said, "he done 'phoned up he gwine stay to de hotel for suppah." Susan had been induced to overcome her deadly fear of the telephone more by her shame at seeing "Marse Robert and Miss Frances" exposed at any time to a danger she dared not touch than by any other feeling, and had learned the mastery of the machine. "Yuh'll hab to hab yo' suppah by yo'sef. I'se fryin' yuh some ham now." Frances pulled her chair closer to the fire. "All right, Susan." Susan lingered. There was a look on Frances' face she did not like to see. "Yuh ain't lonesome, honey?" The sunshine of the girl's nature flashed at once to the surface. "Not a bit! This fire is just glorious; it's cold out-of-doors, cold as Christmas, and the coffee smells delicious, and the ham--hurry up! I'm so hungry, I'll be back in the kitchen if you don't!" Susan, satisfied, hurried off. Frances loosened her jacket and slipped the hat-pins out of her hat and put the hat on her knee; the firelight shone on the brown velvet of it and on her trim brown gown, and her slender foot stretched out towards the hearth, and lighted up the warm tints of her scarlet waist and the rose of her cheeks reddened by wind and fireshine.