"I'd like very much to have the books," she said somewhat helplessly. Edward smoothed out the difficulty without mentioning it. "I go by here so often, to the club--I could easily leave them up there, beside the bushes. If some one else found them or they got rained on, it wouldn't matter--there are plenty of others." He looked up at her, smiling quizzically. "I go to the club almost every afternoon, and ride back about this time--just when you will be curled up here in the hollow examining what I have left. I know you will do just that, because that is what all book-lovers do--an unread book is as tantalizing as ripe fruit just out of reach." Ann thought it was a nice way of being told that he wanted to see her again, and she answered with much of his own manner. "Maybe--but never as late as this, though. See, the sun's most down, an' supper waitin' for you at Westmore, like it is for me up at the farm." "That means that I am dismissed--that it's growing late, and that I've let you sit here without your cape around you.... Let me put it on for you--before we go up." He wrapped it about her, his touch light yet lingering, brought it together under her chin, as one would with a child. "Have you felt cold?" he asked tenderly, as if guarding something infinitely precious. For the second time that day affection lifted in Ann's eyes. In all her life no one had looked at her or spoken to her in just that way; even Garvin had not. "No, I have been warm," she answered softly. Edward looked full into her eyes, the veil of melancholy that so often shadowed his face stealing over it. "Then I've done you no harm, and you have given me a great pleasure," he said. "Now run home quickly--while I get my horse back to the road." Ann went, as he said, quickly. It had seemed to her that morning, as she had walked along the same road with her father, that she could never be comforted. But she had been--doubly comforted. XVI "IT WAS BORN IN HER" "Is Ann always like this?" Coats Penniman asked Sue that evening. They had come from supper and were sitting together on the porch. Preparing the meal had been Sue's work; Ann had insisted that the clearing away was her task, and Sue knew why she had been so determined; she did not want to join them on the porch. "She's always quiet when father is around," Sue answered. "And I'm a strange element--well, it's natural." Sue knew that Coats meant to talk of Ann, and she dreaded it. They had spent almost the entire day together, going over the farm and talking of its possibilities, and Coats had scarcely mentioned Ann. But Sue knew that he was thinking of her from the occasional questions he asked and from the way in which he had studied Ann, surreptitiously, with a pitying intensity which Sue understood well. When he spoke to Ann directly his usually deep voice softened to its kindliest note, and Ann had answered dutifully, but Sue noticed that she kept her eyes turned from him.