“Why, of course I’ll come,” she said, amazed, in her Southern freedom, that he should pause to question the propriety of her so doing. At one o’clock in the day, and with her little darky henchman mounting guard, what possible objection could any one find? She ran up the stone steps with a pretty clattering of her boots, and Roden threw wide the doors of the great hall. She was delighted with everything; got on a chair to examine the great moose-head; struck some chords on an old harp that she discovered in a dark corner; made friends with the collie and one of the Persian cats, who came purring up from the recess of a distant window; looked over his collection of curious weapons; and on finding that he had spent some years of his life in Mexico, questioned him about his experiences there with a pretty assumption of almost motherly interest. “Can’t you say some--some Mexican?” she said. “I should so like to hear it.” “I love you, most beautiful of maidens,” said Roden, lazily, in the Mexican patois. “What does that mean? It sounds enchanting.” “It means enchantment.” She leaned suddenly forward and looked at him with her bright, soft, childishly chaste eyes. “Mr. Roden,” she said, sweetly, “if I were not very sure you were only laughing, I should accuse you of trying to ensnare my simple country soul with a spurious sentimentality.” Roden roused himself from his lounging position in one of the big hall chairs with a jerk. An expression half of amusement, half of guilt, crossed his handsome sunburnt face. “You are very unjust,” he said. “I am certainly not laughing, and I couldn’t be sentimental if I tried.” “Oh! oh!” she said, with her pretty Southern accent. “How very, how rudely unflattering!” “I meant I would not have to try to be so--with you,” said Roden, dexterously mendacious. “How very, how rudely untruthful!” They were here told by Popocatepetl that “lunch dun rade-y.” Roden’s meals were generally presided over by Virginia, and she came forward to meet him now with a little silver dish of apples in one hand, evidently utterly ignorant of the presence of Mary Erroll. She stopped short, half-way across the room. A shadow as definite and sombre as the shadow from a brilliant cloud upon a laughing grass-field in May settled over her face. “I’ll have to fix another place,” she said, curtly, and turned her back upon them in order to do so. Miss Erroll expressed herself charmed with her luncheon. She ate bread and honey with all the gusto of the queen of nursery lore, taking off her riding-gloves and showing long, flower-like hands, that were reflected as whitely in the polished mahogany of the round table as the pale primroses which adorned its centre. Virginia moved about noiselessly. All at once she stopped beside Roden, and put one hand heavily on the back of his chair. He looked up in some surprise. Her eyes were flashing under her bent brows, like the “brush fires” of her native State under a night horizon.