The girl laughed, rather more than seemed necessary, Frank thought, and an added touch of color came into her cheeks. "I did that years ago," she owned. "I think as much of Robin already as I ever could." Then, less lightly, "Besides, I should not like to be a rival of Edith Morrison's. She is a mountain girl, with rather primitive ideas. I do not mean that she is in any sense a savage or even uncultured. Far from it. Her father is a well-read man for his opportunities. They have a good many books here, and Edith has learned the most of them by heart. Last winter she taught school. But she has the mountains in her blood, and in that black hair and those eyes of hers. Only, of course, you do not quite know what that means. The mountains are fierce, untamed, elemental--like the sea. Such things get into one's blood and never entirely go away. Of course, you don't quite understand." Regarding her curiously, Frank said: "I remember your own hunger for the mountains, even in March. One might almost think you native to them, yourself." "My love for them makes me understand," she said, after a pause; then in lighter tone added, "and I should not wish to get in Edith Morrison's way, especially where it related to Robin Farnham." "By which same token I shall avoid getting in Robin Farnham's way," Frank said, as they entered the Lodge hall--a wide room, which in some measure carried out the Anglo-Saxon feudal idea. The floor was strewn with skins, the dark walls of unfinished wood were hung with antlers and other trophies of the chase. At the farther end was a deep stone fireplace, and above it the mounted head of a wild boar. "You see," murmured Constance, "being brought up among these things and in the life that goes with them, one is apt to imbibe a good deal of nature and a number of elementary ideas, in spite of books." A door by the wide fireplace opened just then, and a girl with jetty hair and glowing black eyes--slender and straight as a young birch--came toward them with step as lithe and as light as an Indian's. There was something of the type, too, in her features. Perhaps in a former generation a strain of the native American blood had mingled and blended with the fairer flow of the new possessors. Constance Deane went forward to meet her. "Miss Morrison," she said cordially, "this is Mr. Weatherby, of New York--a friend of ours." The girl took Frank's extended hand heartily. Indeed, it seemed to the young man that there was rather more warmth in her welcome than the occasion warranted. Her face, too, conveyed a certain gratification in his arrival--almost as if here were an expected friend. He could not help wondering if this was her usual manner of greeting--perhaps due to the primitive life she had led--the untrammeled freedom of the hills. But Constance, when she had passed them, said: "I think you are marked for especial favor. Perhaps, after all, Robin is to have a rival." * * * * *