The rose garden of five years' well-trained growth was extremely beautiful, while the pergola that separated it from the formal garden of the fountain, and at the same time served as a gateway to it, was utilized as the booth where roses and fanciful boxes of giant strawberries were to be sold. Bradford, standing at a little distance, under an archway, scanned the faces of the smart married women who bustled about canvassing, and the young girls who carelessly gathered the sumptuous roses into bouquets for the buyers, making a great fuss over the thorns as they did so. Then one tall, white-clad figure arrested his attention. It was Sylvia. She handled the flowers lovingly, and was bestowing patient attention upon a country woman, to whom these pampered roses were a revelation, and who wished a bouquet made up of samples, one of each variety, and not a mass all of a colour like the bunches that were arranged in the great baskets. As Sylvia held the bouquet up for the woman's approval, adding a bud here and there, pausing to breathe its fragrance herself before handing it to the purchaser, Horace's courage came back. She was plainly not a part of the vortex that surrounded her. Circumstances at present seemed to stand between. He could not even venture a guess if she ever gave him other than a friendly thought; but a feeling came over him as he stood in the deep shade, that some day she might be lonely and need steadfast friendship, and then the opportunity to serve her would give him the right to question. Now thoroughly master of himself, he went toward her, and was rewarded by a greeting of unfeigned pleasure, a few moments of general talk, and a big bunch of roses for his mother. "No, you shall not buy these. I am sending them to your mother with my love, to beg pardon for Miss Lavinia and myself, for we've been trying to go to Pine Ridge all the week; but this affair has kept me spinning like a top, and when I do stop I expect to fall over with weariness. I was _so_ sorry about Rockcliffe Commencement. Some day, perhaps, mamma will have finished bringing me out, and then I can crawl in again where it is quiet, and live. Ah, you went to the house and saw her, and she said we were going away next week? I did not know it, but we flit about so one can never tell. I've half a mind to be rebellious and ask to be left here with Lavinia Dorman for guardian, I'm so tired of change. Yes, I enjoyed my flying trip to the West, in a way, though father only came as far as Chicago with me, but I expect him to-morrow."