Cordelia insisted that he should drive back and meet Mrs. Spaulding. If he cared to, he could get her own copy of The Silver Poppy and also the manuscript of her new book. She had rather, she said, that he went over the manuscript alone; in that way he could judge it more impartially. And she turned homeward, feeling that her day was over and done. Mrs. Spaulding greeted Hartley with an effusiveness that almost bewildered that somewhat dignified young man, particularly as he could detect in it no lack of genuineness. She had been told what a promising man he was, and how he was going to write a great book some day. She understood he was a great friend of Mr. Repellier's, and she hoped he would make a regular home of their house, and drop in whenever he felt like it. She pressed him to remain for luncheon, "for pot-luck," she called it, but as he was unable to do that she genially brought down a box of her husband's cigars and protested that both she and Cordelia loved smoke. Hartley--dare it be confessed--was all this time hoping against hope that she was not noticing the too-often clipped fringe about his trouser heels. And the truth was this shrewd and sharp-eyed lady had noticed the tell-tale fringe, but she also had seen a clean-limbed and clear-featured young man, who carried himself with an air of quiet dignity that was well worth studying, and that would look uncommonly well in a theater-box. It all ended in a promise from him that he would run up some morning and exercise one of her horses with Cordelia. Cordelia, standing silent and aloof, remembered what Hartley had said during their drive about English reticence, and threw him a glance which he could see was meant as a silent palliation of what she could not prevent. For a moment it awoke in him an inner voice of distrust, of perplexity, that left him with the feeling that a softening veil had been lifted from between them. It was as though some hand had shaken a shower of petals from the blossoming tree of enchantment and left it half bare and empty. As he said good-by, depressed in spirits and scarcely understanding why it was, Cordelia slipped into his hand a delicately perfumed package tied with blue silk ribbon, together with a copy of The Silver Poppy. "I want you to keep this; it was the first copy from the press," she told him. And she added that she hoped he wouldn't waste too much of his time over the manuscript. She knew he would find it all wrong, that there would be a thousand things to disappoint him. And she begged him to make whatever changes he would; she trusted him implicitly. "I'm afraid you'll not like it," she said timidly, coming with him to the door. She had slipped one of Mrs. Spaulding's hothouse rosebuds into his button-hole, and she touched it with her fingers with a gesture that meant much. He would have taken her hand, but she drew it back quickly.