_I_t was three days later before Arthur Brent was able to leave the duties that detained him in Richmond. When at last he found himself free, one of the infrequent trains of that time had just gone, and there would be no other for many hours to come. His impatience to be at Wyanoke was uncontrollable. For three days he had brooded over Dorothy’s manner to him at the hotel, and wondered, with much longing, whether she might not meet him differently at home. He recalled the frankly impulsive eagerness with which she had greeted him in the first moment of their meeting, and he argued with himself that her later reserve might have been simply a reaction from that first outburst of joy, a maidenly impulse to atone to her pride for the lapse into old, childlike manners. This explanation seemed a very probable one, and yet--he reflected that there were no strangers standing by when she had relapsed into a reserve that bordered upon hauteur--nobody before whom she need have hesitated to be cordial. He had asked her about her mother, thinking thus to awaken some warmth of feeling in her and reëstablish a footing of sympathy. But her reply had been a business-like statement that Madame Le Sud would remain in New York for a few days, to secure the clothing she would need for her field ministrations to the wounded, after which she would take some very quiet lodging in Richmond until duty should call her. Altogether Arthur Brent’s impatience to know the worst or best--whichever it might be--grew greater with every hour, and when he learned that he must idly wait for several hours for the next train, he mounted Gimlet and set out upon the long horseback journey, for which Gimlet, weary of the stable, manifested an eagerness quite equal to his own. When the young man dismounted at Wyanoke, Dorothy was the first to meet him, and there was something in her greeting that puzzled him even more than her manner on the former occasion had done. For Dorothy too had been thinking of the hotel episode, and repenting herself of her coldness on that occasion. She understood it even less than Arthur did. She had not intended to be reserved with him, and several times during that evening she had made an earnest effort to be natural and cordial instead, but always without success, for some reason that she could not understand. So she had carefully planned to greet him on his home-coming, with all the old affection and without reserve. To that end she had framed in her own mind the things she would say to him and the manner of their saying. Now that he had come, she said the things she had planned to say, but she could not adopt the manner she had intended. The result was something that would have been ludicrous had it been less painful to both the parties concerned. It left Arthur worse puzzled than ever and obviously pained. It sent Dorothy to her chamber for that “good cry,” which feminine human nature holds to be a panacea.