Mitchell led the way out to dinner, Irene's calm hand on the arm of the guest. What a superb figure she made at the head of the splendid table under the pink lights of the candle-shades! How gracefully she ordered this away, and that brought, even while she laughed and chatted so delightfully. And she--_she_--that superb woman of birth, manners, and position--could be had for the asking. Not only that, but the whole horrible indecision which lay on him like a nightmare could in that way be brushed aside. He felt the blood of shame rush to his face, but it ran back to its source in a moment. Dolly would soon forget him. She would marry some mountaineer, perhaps the teacher, Warren Wilks, and in that case the man would take her into his arms, and--No, Mostyn's blood boiled and beat in his brain with the sudden passionate fury of a primitive man; that would be unbearable. She had said she had kissed no other man and never would. Yes, she was his; her whole wonderful, warm, throbbing being was his; and yet--and yet how could it be? "You seem preoccupied." Irene smiled on him. "Are you already worried over business?" "I'm afraid I always have more or less to bother me," he answered, evasively. "Then, too, a hot, dusty bank is rather depressing after pure open mountain air." "I had exactly that feeling when we returned," she smiled. "We certainly had a glorious time. We had quite an Atlanta group with us, you know, and we kept together. The others said we were clannish and stuck-up, but we didn't care. We played all sorts of pranks after father went to bed." "You would have thought so if you had heard them, Dick," the old man said, dryly. "They stayed up till three one morning and raised such a row that the other guests of the hotel threatened to call in the police." "It was the greatest lark I ever was in," Irene declared, with a hearty laugh. "That night Cousin Kitty put on a suit of Andy Buckton's clothes. In the dark we all took her for a boy. She was the most comical thing you ever saw. I laughed till I was sick." Dinner over, they went out to the veranda. The lawn stretched green and luscious down to the white pavement under the swinging arc light over the street. Mitchell left them seated in a hammock and sauntered down to the side fence, where he stood talking to a neighbor who was sprinkling his lawn with a hose and nozzle. At eleven o'clock Irene went up to her cousin, finding the young lady still reading her novel under the green shade of a drop-light. Miss Langley was a good-looking girl, slender, small of limb, active in movement, and a blonde. "Well," she said, closing her book and looking up, sleepily, "I wanted to see what is coming to this pair of sweethearts, but they can wait. I am anxious to know what is going on in real life. I am tired of the poky way you and Dick Mostyn are courting. I want to be a swell bridesmaid, I do."