"Oh, what's the matter with Becky, Moms?" "Why?" "She hasn't any pep." "I know." "Isn't she well?" "I have tried to have her see a doctor. But she won't. She insists that she is all right----" "She is not. She is no more like the old Becky than champagne is like--milk---- Becky was the kind that--went to your head--Mums. You know that--sparkling." "I have wondered," Mrs. Beaufort said, slowly, "if anything happened while I was away." "What could happen----" His mother sighed. "Nothing, I suppose----" She let it go at that. Her intuitions carried her towards the truth. She had learned from Mandy and the Judge that Dalton had spent much time at Huntersfield in her absence. Becky never mentioned him. Her silence spoke eloquently, Mrs. Beaufort felt, of something concealed. Becky was apt to talk of things that interested her. And there had been no doubt of her interest in Dalton before her aunt had gone away. Randy, coming often now to Huntersfield, had his heart torn for his beloved. No one except himself knew what had happened, and the knowledge stirred him profoundly. He held that burning torches and a stake were none too good for Dalton. He sighed for the old days in Virginia when gentlemen settled such matters in the woods at dawn, with pistols, seconds, a shot or two. Farther back it would have been an affair of knives and tomahawks--Indian chiefs in a death struggle. But neither duels nor death struggles were in the modern mode, nor would any punishment which he might inflict on Dalton help Becky in this moment of deep humiliation. He knew her pride and the hurt that had come to her, he knew her love, and the deadly inertia which had followed the loss of illusion. Randy's love was not a selfish love. In that tense moment of Becky's confession on the day of the barbecue, his own hopes had died. The boy in him had died, too, and he had reached the full stature of a man. He wanted to protect and shield--he was all tenderness. He felt that he would dare anything, do anything, if he could bring back to Becky the dreams of which Dalton robbed her.