"No one will ever have a chance to understand her fully but the man she loves," he thought. "To him she would give the clew to all her treasures, or else show them with sweet abandon, and it would require a lifetime for the task. She has a beauty and a character that would never pall, for the reason that she draws her life so directly from nature. I have never met a woman that affected me as she does." He sighed again. In spite of the loyalty to which he believed himself fully committed, Stella Wildmere, with her Wall Street complications, her variegated experience as to adorers, and her present questionable diplomacy, seemed rather faded beside this girl, upon whose heart the dew still rested. For the first time the thought passed consciously through his mind, "Stella has never made me so happy as I have been the last few hours. More than that, she never gave life an aspect so rich, sweet, and full of noble possibility. Madge makes blasé, shallow cynicism impossible in a fellow." As he danced with Miss Wildmere that evening, or sauntered with her on the piazza or through secluded paths, the same tendency to comparisons tormented him. He could not make himself believe that Miss Wildmere's words were like the flow of a clear, bubbling spring, pure and sweet. There was in them a sediment, the product of a life which had passed through channels more and more distasteful to contemplate. The next day he went to town to look after some business matters, and returned by the latest train. To his surprise he found Madge absent, and was immediately conscious of a vague sense of disappointment. CHAPTER XXVI MRS. MUIR'S ACCOUNT After a light supper Graydon went in search of Stella, but she was nowhere to be found, nor had the warm evening lured Mrs. Wildmere from her room. He had learned that Arnault was still at the house, and he inferred, from the surpassing beauty of the moonlit evening, that his rival would not let such witching hours pass without an effort to turn them to account. With a frown he retreated from the music, dancing, and gayety of a full house, and went up to Mrs. Muir's room. That lady was found writing to her husband, but she welcomed Graydon, and began volubly: "I'm very glad you have come; I'm so full and overflowing about Madge that I had to write to Henry." "It certainly does seem an odd proceeding on her part--this remaining all night at a farmhouse among strangers," was his discontented reply. "It would be odd in any one but Madge. I do not think there are many girls in this house who would be guilty of such eccentricities--certainly not Miss Wildmere," she added, with a rather malicious twinkle in her eyes. "If I were a man, I wouldn't stand it. I've been on the alert somewhat to-day, for I don't wish to see you made a fool of. That Mr. Arnault has been at her side the livelong time, and he's out driving with her now." "I understand all about that," said Graydon, impatiently; "tell me about Madge."