The next moment she was cantering up the broad white way.... As she rounded a bend, she flung up an arm and waved her crop cheerily. Anthony waved back. * * * * * Miss Valerie French sat in her library at Bell Hammer, with her elbows propped on the writing-table and her head in her hands. She had been free of the great room ever since she could remember. Long before her father's death she had been accustomed to sit curled in its great chairs, to lie upon the huge tiger-skin before the hearth, or gravely to face her father across that very table and draw houses and flights of steps and stiff-legged men and women with flat feet upon his notepaper, while Mr. French dealt with his correspondence. Always, when the picture was completed, it would be passed to him for his approval and acceptance; and he would smile and thank her and audibly identify the objects portrayed; and, if he were not too busy, they would remind him of a tale, the better to follow which she must leave her chair and climb on to his knee.... Then he had died--ten years after her birth, nine years after her mother's death. There were who said he had died of a broken heart--a heart broken nine years before. It may have been true. Valerie loved the room more than ever.... When she was come of age, she made it her boudoir. Flowers and silks and silver lit up its stateliness. Beneath the influence of a grand piano and the soft-toned cretonnes upon the leather chairs, the solemnity of the chamber melted into peace. The walls of literature, once so severe, became a kindly background, wearing a wise, grave smile.