Now had come the third time--to-day--the moment before Frank Weatherby's arrival. They were approaching the house and did not see her, while she had lost not a detail of the scene. Robin's very carriage--and hers--the turn of a face, the manner of a word she could not hear, all spoke of a certain tenderness, an understanding, a sort of ownership, it seemed--none the less evident because, perhaps, they themselves were all unconscious of it. The mountain girl remarked the beauty of that other one and mentally compared it with her own. This girl was taller than she, and fairer. Her face was richer in its coloring--she carried herself like one of the noble ladies in the books. Oh, they were a handsome pair--and not unlike, she thought. Not that they resembled, yet something there was common to both. It must be that noble carriage of which she had been always so proud in Robin. There swept across her mental vision a splendid and heart-sickening picture of Robin going out into the world with this rich, cultured girl, and not herself, his wife. The Deanes were not pretentious people, and there was wealth enough already. They might well be proud of Robin. Edith cherished no personal bitterness toward either Constance or Robin--not yet. Neither did she realize to what lengths her impetuous, untrained nature might carry her, if really aroused. Her only conscious conclusion thus far was that Robin and Constance, without knowing it themselves, were drifting into a dangerous current, and that this new arrival might become a guide back to safety. Between Frank Weatherby and herself there was the bond of a common cause. CHAPTER V A FLOWER ON A MOUNTAIN TOP Prosperous days came to the Lodge. Hospitable John Morrison had found a calling suited to his gifts when he came across the mountain and built the big log tavern at the foot of McIntyre. With July, guests multiplied, and for those whose duty it was to provide entertainment the problem became definite and practical. Edith Morrison found her duties each day heavier and Robin Farnham was seldom unemployed. Usually he was away with his party by daybreak and did not return until after nightfall. Wherever might lie his inclination there would seem to be little time for love making in such a season. By the middle of the month the Deanes had taken possession of their camp on the west branch of the Au Sable, having made it habitable with a consignment of summer furnishings from New York, and through the united efforts of some half dozen mountain carpenters, urged in their deliberate labors by the owner, Israel Deane, an energetic New Englander who had begun life a penniless orphan and had become chief stockholder in no less than three commercial enterprises on lower Broadway.