“She doctored there for a long time, and everything cost so much money! Then one day, one of the doctors told father she’d never get well if she stayed in that climate. ‘Take her to California, to the foot-hills where the air’s hot and dry,’ he said, ‘that’s the only chance you’ve got.’ So we sold everything and left Virginia and came over here. We tried several places, but some of them didn’t seem to suit her, and in others they asked too high rents. We had hardly anything left. And then we just came here and settled on that--on our--on your--” She came to a stammering stop and then ended desperately--“in that empty cottage over there.” The Colonel rose and walked to the balcony rail. He stood for a moment with his back toward her, then slowly wheeled and approached her. She had risen and was looking at him with a perplexed expression. “That’s all right,” he said, taking her hand. “I’ll be up this afternoon. Will between four and five do?” She considered as a town lady might whose day was full of engagements. She was, in fact, speculating as to whether she and her sister would be free from the domestic tasks which filled their waking hours. “Yes,” she said, nodding, “that’ll be a very good time. Mother rests and we--we are busy in the early part of the afternoon.” She held out her hand to him, and as he walked down the steps beside her to the gate, again expressed her pleasure at having found him. “June told me what you looked like,” she said over the gate, eying him thoughtfully as if she intended giving June her opinion of the stranger’s appearance. “So I knew if you were anywhere round I’d find you.” She smiled a last good-by and turned away to the walk under the locusts. The Colonel went back to his seat on the balcony. He lit a fresh cigar and sat there smoking till Mitty came to summon him to the midday dinner. CHAPTER VI THE OLD LOVE At half-past four he was walking through the dust toward the cottage. The main feeling in his heart was dread. But he could not disregard Alice’s summons--Alice’s dying summons, he felt them to be. He tried to prepare himself by thinking that nearly a quarter of a century had passed, and what havoc it must have wrought. But he saw only the face of the girl he had loved, fresh and sweet, as it had been when he had bidden her good-by on the steamer on a morning full of sun and hope, twenty-one years ago. He had left the town’s main street behind and was now walking on a narrow footpath beside the road which, on one side, skirted his own land. A still, scorching warmth had possession of the hour. The landscape, glazed with heat, seemed to faint under the unwinking glare of sun. From the parched grassland and the thickets of chaparral, pungent scents arose--the ardent odors that the woods of foot-hill California exhale in the hot, breathless quiescence of summer afternoons.