truth, insisting on its disclosure as a matter of paramount importance, that Judge Roscoe as her nearest kinsman and former guardian had suggested a ride with her, when in the quiet of an uninterrupted conversation he intended to remonstrate against her lack of candor, seek to ascertain the facts, and then devise some measures looking toward the betterment of the unhappy situation. The slaughter by Rufus Gwynn of the unoffending horse had eliminated the necessity alike of remonstrance or advice. Her ideals, her hope, her love, were destroyed as by one blow. Her resolution of separation was taken and, albeit her anxious friends feared her capacity for forgiveness was not exhausted, it proved final. The end came on the day that Rufus Gwynn's horse, rearing under whip and spur, and falling, broke his rider's neck. This was her romance and her awakening from love's young dream. These were the scenes that she lived over and over. This was her past that every moment of leisure converted into her present,--palpable, visible, vital,--and her future seemed bounded only by the possibilities of retrospect. With the many-thonged scourge of her memory how could she listen to the monologue of this stranger! Thus it was that her attentive attitude was suddenly stultified by his direct appeal to her. Thus she had reddened and faltered in embarrassment for the rude solecism, and gathered her faculties for some hesitant semblance of polite response. Lapsed in the delight of his fool's paradise, Baynell discerned naught of the truth. Left presently alone in the library, he serenely watched through the long window the slow progress of the shadows following the golden vernal sunshine throughout the grove. The wind faintly stirred, barely enough to shake the bells of the pink and darkly blue hyacinths standing tall and full in the parterre at one side of the house. The plangent tone of a single key, struck on the grand piano, fell on the stillness within, and after a time another, and slowly still another, in doubting ascension of the gamut, as one of the "ladies" submitted to the cruelty of a music lesson. His lip smilingly curved at the thought. And still gazing out in serene languor, all unprescient, he once more noted the spring sun of that momentous day slowly westering, westering.