Suddenly, as she lay thinking and staring at the walls, life took on new and serious aspects, and she did not want it to be so. Because she had been so much away from home the provincial idea that every man that calls on a girl, or takes her to a theater in our free, unchaperoned way, is a serious suitor had not impressed her. She had expected to come home and enjoy herself indefinitely, and had idealized a situation in which she should be the stay of her father through his old age, and the chum and guide of her brother, in whom the repetition of her mother's characteristics strongly appealed to her. There had been little trouble or grief in her life, and now for the first time she saw uncertainties ahead where a few hours before everything had seemed simple and clear. She had felt no offense when her father spoke slightingly of Warry Raridan; she knew that her father really liked him, as every one did, and she would not have hesitated to say that she admired him greatly, even in his possession of those traits which betrayed the weaknesses of his character. She certainly had no thought of him save as a whimsical and amusing friend, a playmate who had never grown up. It was true that he had made love to her, or had tried to; but she had no faith in his sincerity. She had first felt amused, and then a little sorry, when he had gone to work so earnestly. He took the trouble to remind her frequently that it was all for her, and she laughed at him and at the love-making which he was always attempting and which she always thwarted. Saxton did not come often to the house, but when he came he exercised his ingenuity to bring Raridan into the talk in the rare times that they were alone together. She knew why Saxton praised her friend to her, and it increased her liking for him. It is curious how a woman's pity goes out to a man; any suggestion of misfortune makes an excuse for her to clothe him with her compassion. It is as though Nature, in denying gifts or inflicting punishment, hastened to throw in compensations. Saxton asked so little, and beamed so radiantly when given so little; he received kindnesses so shyly, as if, of course, they could not be meant for him, but it was all right anyway, and he would move on just as soon as the other fellow came. As for Wheaton, he was certainly not frivolous, and her father's respect for him and dependence on him had communicated itself to her. He was so much older than she; and at twenty-two, thirty-five savors of antiquity; but he was steady, and steadiness was a trait that she respected. He was terribly formal, but he was kind and thoughtful; he was even handsome, or at least so every one said. She lay dreaming until the clock on the mantel chimed midnight, when she reached for the novel that had fallen on the coverlet, to put it on the stand beside her bed. A card which she had been using as a mark fell from the book; she picked it up and turned it over to see whose it was. It was John Saxton's.