"Ah, but you will stand that way--steady," she said, and drew her hand from his, and led the way homeward. She had accepted her fate to wait and endure while he "faced things." They went back into the sunset together, almost silent. Far and wide rolled the hills in their flaunting glory, and, now and again, the girl's breath trembled and stung her,--that tidal sense of colour leaping and rioting within her, perhaps. Now and again the man's jaws set together more firmly. When they talked at all it was of little things. "Why didn't I ever meet you at Miss Gossamer's?" he asked once. "You were in Philadelphia when I was visiting Elsie, that was why. Neither you nor Mr. Carington were in New York that month. I remember that I got an idea that Elsie missed Mr. Carington, or you, or both. Mr. Carington was in love with her, wasn't he?" "Yes, he's always been in love with her, I think.--Do you like the East?" he asked again, not caring for the subject of Miss Gossamer. "To get an education in." "You are well educated," he said, as though making comparisons. In that matter of education, her selective abilities had been indeed good. She had taken from her opportunities developmental elements and used them within herself wisely. She had fine conceptions of art, she was well-read; and because she had foreseen that she would be too rich to have any separate use for the things of art and learning, she had seized upon and welded all her inclinations and accomplishments into an harmonious, delightful completeness as Woman. In the result, her education seemed to be one of the especial reasons that you liked her. "But as for that," said Steering, speaking his thought aloud, "reasons don't count. There are plenty of reasons, but one really never gets at the biggest reason of all." "You hardly expect me to understand that," she said, laughing frankly, a musical laugh that had in it the shaking, white flash of a rock-fluted hill-stream. "No, no! I don't expect you to understand that," he said. They went on through the deep, odorous wood, down close to the river's pale, shallow mystery again, and so back to the big gate at Madeira Place. There at the gate the girl put out her hand to him again. "Good-bye!" she said softly, "good-bye!" As he bent to kiss the hand his breath came hard. "It is not good-bye," he said. "It shall not be. I swear it." Then he dashed on down the ridge road toward Canaan, to find Crittenton Madeira. _Chapter Ten_ WHO'S GOT THE TIGMORES?