A certain warmth was in her gaze as she looked about, her, something deeper than mere pride of possession. Her feeling for the land she owned was curiously maternal. "My dear fields," she sometimes said to herself. "My cattle, my trees"; and even, "my birds, my pretty, fleecy clouds up there." When she came to a certain cornfield, acres of thrifty stalks standing their seven feet and more, green to the roots, plumes nodding proudly in the breeze, she faced her mare about and saluted, as an officer might salute his regiment. A chuckle sounded from the other side of the road. On a bank almost level with her head a young man lay under a beech-tree, watching her with kindling eyes, as he had watched her ever since she rode into sight. "Miss Kate, Miss Kate, when are you going to grow up and give those girls of yours a chance?" Her surprised blush took all the maturity out of her face. She might have been twenty. "Spying on me as usual, Philip! Well, why shouldn't I salute this corn of mine? It certainly serves me nobly." He came down from the bank and stood beside her; a stalwart young man in shabby riding-boots and a clerical collar, with eyes surprisingly blue in a dark, aquiline, un-Anglo-Saxon face. They were filled just now with a look that made the lady blush again. He was thinking (no new thought to Kentuckians) that of all the products of his great commonwealth, nothing equalled such women as this before him. Erect, deep-bosomed, with the warm brown flush of her cheeks, her level gaze, her tender mouth with the deep corners that mean humor--Kate Kildare, from girlhood to old age, would find in eyes that gazed on her the unconscious tribute that many women never know, and for that reason happily do not miss. But the vital quality of her beauty was not a matter of color, or form, or feature. It was a thing that had come to her since her first youth, a glow from within, the sort of spiritual fire at which a friend may warm himself. If happiness is a great beautifier, Philip Benoix believed he knew of one greater: sorrow. "Well, well?" she demanded, laughing. "What are you staring at, boy? Why are you ogling me in that sentimental fashion? Have you mistaken me for--Jacqueline, perhaps?" If she hoped to embarrass him in turn, she was disappointed. He shook his head. "If I were to ogle Jacqueline sentimentally, she'd slap me. Miss Kate," he added, "don't you know that saluting your corn was just your pagan way of thanking God? Why not come to church and do it properly?" "You may just as well give it up. I shall never go to church. I don't like church, so there! Stop talking shop, and come home to supper with me. What are you doing here, anyway, lolling about like a man of leisure, as if there were no souls to be saved?" "I was lying in wait for yours. I knew you were out on a tour of inspection, and bound to pass this way." "Did you want to see me especially?" "I always do."