Margaret had indulged in no masculine ingenuities of logic. Woman-like, she had gone straight to the practical point: Craig had written instead of coming--he was, therefore, afraid of her. Having written he had not fled, but had come--he was, therefore, attracted by her still. Obviously the game lay in her own hands, for what more could woman ask than that a man be both afraid and attracted? A little management and she not only would save herself from the threatened humiliation of being jilted--jilted by an uncouth nobody of a Josh Craig!--but also would have him in durance, to punish his presumption at her own good pleasure as to time and manner. If Joshua Craig, hardy plodder in the arduous pathway from plowboy to President, could have seen what was in the mind so delicately and so aristocratically entempled in that graceful, slender, ultra-feminine body of Margaret Severence's, as she descended the stairs, putting fresh gloves upon her beautiful, idle hands, he would have borrowed wings of the wind and would have fled as from a gorgon. But as she entered the room nothing could have seemed less formidable except to the heart. Her spring dress--she was wearing it for the first time--was of a pale green, suggesting the draperies of islands of enchantment. Its lines coincided with the lines of her figure. Her hat, trimmed to match, formed a magic halo for her hair; and it, in turn, was the entrancing frame in which her small, quiet, pallid face was set--that delicate, sensitive face, from which shone, now softly and now brilliantly, those hazel eyes a painter could have borrowed for a wood nymph. In the doorway, before greeting him, she paused. "Williams," she called, and Craig was thrilled by her "high-bred" accent, that seemed to him to make of the English language a medium different from the one he used and heard out home. "Yes, ma'am," came the answer in the subtly-deferential tone of the aristocracy of menialdom, conjuring for Craig, with the aid of the woman herself and that aristocratic old room, a complete picture of the life of upper-class splendor. "Did you order the carriage, as I asked?" "Yes, ma'am; it's at the door." "Thank you." And Margaret turned upon an overwhelmed and dazzled Craig. He did not dream that she had calculated it all with a view to impressing him--and, if he had, the effect would hardly have been lessened. Whether planned or not, were not toilette and accent, and butler and carriage, all realities? Nor did he suspect shrewd calculations upon snobbishness when she said: "I was in such haste to dress that I hurt my poor maid's hand as she was lacing my boot"--she thrust out one slender, elegantly-clad foot--"no, buttoning it, I mean." Oh, these ladies, these ladies of the new world--and the old--that are so used to maids and carriages and being waited upon that they no more think of display in connection with them than one would think of boasting two legs or two eyes!