“How can I accuse you,” she said, “when I, too, am a coward before Richard Skelton? I ought to say: ‘We are desperately poor and in debt--we can’t afford to risk anything, no matter how promising the chances are, because we have nothing to risk. We are living now upon our creditors.’ Instead of that, I sit by and smile and say I have no fear, and profess to be willing. I am the greatest coward in the world. One word, just now, and the whole thing would have been off--but I did not say it. No, I am as much to blame in this as you are.” Skelton, driving home, concluded he would stop at Belfield. He was inwardly raging, as he always was at any slight upon Lewis Pryor. There was he, Mr. Skelton, of Deerchase, supposed to be the richest and most powerful man in the county, and yet he could not get a single family to recognise that boy--except at Belfield. Just as he was turning this over bitterly in his mind, he drove up to the door of the Belfield house. It was yet in the bright forenoon. Both Mr. and Mrs. Shapleigh were at home. Skelton only stayed a few minutes, when, glancing out of the window, he saw Sylvia and Lewis Pryor sitting together in the little summerhouse on the bridge across the creek that separated the two plantations. Skelton rose. “I see Miss Shapleigh on the bridge, and if you will excuse me I will say good-day to you and join her.” Old Tom was excessively surprised. “Why,” said he, “you are paying us a monstrous short visit! I thought you had come especially to see me.” “Not at all,” said Skelton, “I called to pay my respects to the ladies,” and, with a bow, he walked out, and they saw him cross the lawn and follow the bridge to the summerhouse. “There, now, Mr. Shapleigh!” exclaimed Mrs. Shapleigh triumphantly, “wasn’t I a long-headed woman, to have that summerhouse built eighteen years ago for Richard Skelton and Sylvia to make love in?” “It’s the first time they’ve ever been in it since it was built, ma’am.” “Well, everything has to have a beginning, Mr. Shapleigh, though, of course, I know he never can marry my poor, beautiful girl.” “Yes, he can, Mrs. Shapleigh. If he chooses to pay several hundred thousand dollars for her, he can.” “Mr. Shapleigh, you talk very foolishly. What man alive, do you think, would pay that much to marry any woman? Though I will say, if any woman is worth it, Sylvia is the one, and she’s not half as good-looking as I was at her age, either.” “True, madam. But if one had half a million dollars to buy a wife with, he might have a good, long hunt before he found a woman like you, my own love.” “Now, Mr. Shapleigh, are you joking?” “I can’t hear you, my sweet,” responded Mr. Shapleigh cheerfully. “Every day I seem to get deafer and deafer, particularly to your voice.”