There was a sound of horses' feet, and Ruth Franklin rode round the corner, on Kentucky Belle, giving them a gay nod as she passed. Horace Chase and Malachi Hill were with her, both mounted on beautiful horses--one black, one chestnut; and at some distance behind followed Chase's groom. "How _happy_ she looks!" murmured Miss Billy, with an involuntary sigh. "Yes. She has obtained what she likes," commented Larue. "Hers is a frivolous nature; she requires gayety, change, luxury, and now she will have them. Her family are very wise to consent. For they have, I suspect, but little money. Her good looks will soon disappear; at thirty she will be plain." And this time, decidedly, he walked away. Miss Billy, her eyes dimmed by unshed tears, looked after him. "Such a--such a _worldly_ view of marriage!" she managed to articulate. "What can you expect from a fish?" answered Etheridge, secretly glad of his opportunity. "Achilles Larue is as cold-blooded as a mackerel, and always was. I don't say he will never marry again; but if he does, the woman he selects will have to go down on her knees and stay there" (Miss Billy's eyes looked hopeful); "and bring him, also, a good big sum of money in her hand." Here, noticing that one of the pairs of gloves had slipped down so far that it was held by the tips of its fingers only, he turned away with a sudden "Good-afternoon." For he had had rheumatism all night in the small of his back; he could walk, but he could not stoop. Miss Billy went home much depressed. The night before, after her usual devotions and an hour's perusal of _The Blue Ridge in the Glacial Period_ (she read the volume through regularly once a month), she had attempted a thought-transferrence. She had, indeed, made many such experiments since Maud Muriel's explanation of the process. But last night she had for the first time succeeded in keeping her mind strictly to the subject; for nearly ten minutes, with her face screwed up by the intensity of the effort, she had willed continuously, "Like me, Achilles, like me!" (She was too modest even to _think_ "love" instead of "like.") "You must! You _shall_!" And now, when at last she had succeeded in meeting him, this was the result! She put away the gloves mechanically: she had bought them not from any need, but simply because she had felt the wish to go out and _do_ something when the exciting news of Ruth Franklin's engagement had reached her at noon. Stirred as she already was by her own private experiment of the previous night, the thought in her heart was: "Well, it isn't extravagance, for light gloves are always useful. And then in case of--of anything happening to _me_, they'd be all ready."