“My dear little girl,” he said, bending over and kissing her smooth brow with one of his rash impulses, “we must see what can be done with that voice. I am thinking that you will add to the honor of your name some day, Miss Herrick.” She started to her feet. It was as though her very heart’s blood had risen to meet his lips. A delicate, vivid rose-color dyed all her brow and temples. “How do you mean?--how do you mean?” she said, in a rough, shaken whisper, holding both hands against her heart as though afraid it would leap from her body. “Never mind what I mean just now,” he said, with the smile of a wiseacre; “and, Virginia, since you have sung that song so charmingly, I am sure that you will be glad for me about something which I am going to tell you.” Glad? Was she not always glad for anything which gave him joy? Had she not read her eyes almost sightless, night after night, in mastering that strange horse lore which would enable her to help him in his enterprises? She came nearer, in bright expectancy; lifted her face to meet his looks and words. “Yes,” she said; “please tell me. I know I’ll be glad--I cert’n’y will.” “I am engaged to be married,” he told her. “I am engaged to be married to Miss Mary Erroll, and--I want you to be the first to congratulate me, Virginia.” He could recall nothing afterwards but the swift withdrawing of her hands from his. He could not even remember how she had left the room. She seemed to vanish as though in reality she had been but a wraith summoned up by fancy from days long fled. But Virginia? Ah, Virginia! Out, out, out into the night she sped on supple, unshod feet. She had torn off those queer little parodies of shoes at the hall door, and held them now mechanically to her breast as she ran. The air, redolent with peach-blossoms and hyacinths just born, rushed to meet her from the dark jaws of the east, as though some leviathan should breathe with a sweet breath upon the night May earth. There was no moon in the lustrous blue-gray of the heavens, but the stars seemed trying to atone for her absence by their multitudinous shining. As Virginia dashed on past a clump of box-bushes, her skirts brushing the stiff leaves set them rattling, and woke the nested birds to querulous complaints. Her feet were wet with the night grasses, and bruised with the pebbles of the carriage-drive. She reached the lawn gate, opened it, and rushed through. On, on, across a field of grass, close-cropped by the not fastidious sheep, who, warmly folded on a neighboring hill-side, still nibbled drowsily between their slumbers such luscious blades as were within their reach.