"It will serve me quite right if he won't come," she sobbed. "I wouldn't if I were he, not one step--and he's just as stubborn as I am. I never was half good enough for him, and now I've neglected him, and frittered away my time, and even flirted with other men--when I'd scratch out the eyes of any other woman if she dared to look at him. It's to be hoped that he doesn't find out what a frivolous, empty-headed, silly, vain little fool I am--though it probably would be better for him in the end if he did." Sylvia passed a very unhappy day, as she richly deserved to do. For the woman who gives a man a new ideal to live for, and then, carelessly, herself falls short of the standard she has set for him, often does as great and incalculable harm as the woman who has no standards at all. Uncle Mat received a distinct shock when he reached his apartment that night, to find that his niece, dressed in a severely plain black gown, was dining at home alone with him. Before he finished his soup he received another shock. "Austin Gray is coming to New York," she said, coolly, buttering a cracker; "I have just had a telegram saying he will take a night train, and get in early in the morning--eight o'clock, I believe. I think I'll go and meet him at the station. Are you willing he should come here, and sleep on the living-room sofa, as you suggested once before, or shall I take him to a hotel?" "Bring him here by all means," returned her bewildered relative; "I like that boy immensely. What streak of good luck is setting him loose? I thought he was tied hand and foot by bucolic occupations." "Apparently he has found some means of escape," said Sylvia; "would you care to read aloud to me this evening?" CHAPTER XIII "Why, Sylvia, my dear! I never dreamed that you would come to meet me!" Austin was, indeed, almost beside himself with surprise and delight when, as he left the train and walked down the long platform in the Grand Central Station, he saw Sylvia, dressed in pure white serge, standing near the gate. He waved his hat like a schoolboy, and hurried forward, setting down his suit-case to grip her hands in both of his. "Have you had any breakfast?" she asked, as they started off. "Yes, indeed, an hour ago." "Then where would you like to go first? I have the motor here, and we're both entirely at your disposal." He hesitated a moment, and then said, laughing, "It didn't occur to me that you'd come to the station, and I fully intended to go somewhere and get a hair-cut that wouldn't proclaim me as coming straight from Hamstead, Vermont, and replenish the wardrobe that looked so inexhaustible to me last fall, before I presented myself to you." Sylvia joined in his laugh. "Go ahead. I'll sit in the motor and wait for you. Afterwards we'll go shopping together." "To buy things like these?" he asked, eyeing her costume with approval.