But there was the next day for remembrance, when the rain shut her in, and the storm lashed along the mountains and beat across the quadrangle; and the next, when the clouds held sullen guard over the hill-tops. Three days had gone by, and Lawson had not returned. It was the evening of that third day that, sitting in her old chair before the library fire, while her father was reading absorbedly not far away, Frances heard the bell ring sharply. She did not know that every nerve in her was tense as she heard the voice in the hall when Susan opened the door. "Mr. Lawson," said Susan, coming into the room; "he walked straight on into the parlor." Frances kept her face turned away; she felt the hot flush there, as she got to her feet and pulled her fleecy scarf about her bare neck. There was a strange feeling of suffocation in her throat, but she set her lips firmly and held her head high as she walked across the hall, her gown rustling about her. "Frances!" Lawson sprang to meet her as the portière dropped behind her. What she saw in his face and what she felt in her own heart held her speechless, but to Lawson it looked adorable confusion,--the warm flush and lowered lids, and red, proud mouth. "Frances!" He strode across to her and would have put his arms about her, but that she shrank back. His eyes showed quick amusement. He loved her a hundred times better so, with all her changeableness; he was never quite sure of her or of her mood. "You do not know how I have longed to see you," he whispered. Her eyelids fluttered up, he had one searching look from darkened eyes, and then he knew he must make his peace. "In Richmond," he began--"but you are not going to stand here?" He stood aside as she went past him, her scarlet skirt swishing against his feet, and he watched her with a delight he would not let her know for worlds. So she was angry! He followed her and leaned against the mantel. She, too, was standing, as if to intimate that what he had to say were best said quickly. "In Richmond," he began again, and hastened on, "I didn't see--you don't know what I wished for you,"--he would act as if there were no possible shadow between them,--"I searched the stores and searched. I went to Washington--" Surely this were explanation enough, though he had a swift and guilty remembrance of the one brief day in Washington, of the theatre party and the supper at the Jefferson when he came back to Richmond that night, which Elizabeth Martin had been so quick to arrange at his invitation and to promise not to write of, and then of the german next night. They had trusted to Frances not hearing, and she had not, nor ever did. He drew from a pocket of the overcoat he still had on, a satin case and laid it on the table, watching Frances with keen delighted eyes. The mouth was drooping a little now, the cheek paling, there was even a suspicion of tears about the lowered lids.