the ability to use men and circumstances as if they were tools in his hands.

When the young man ran down the steps there was a pleasant excitement tingling in his veins, as if he were feeling the glow of forbidden wine. Turning beside the fountain, he glanced back as the Governor was closing the door, and in his vision of the lighted interior he saw Patty Vetch darting airily across the hall. So it was nothing more than a hoax! She hadn't hurt herself in the least. She had merely made a laughing-stock of him for the amusement doubtless of her obscure acquaintances! For an instant anger held him motionless; then turning quickly he walked rapidly past the fountain to the open gate.

The snow was dimly lighted on the long slope to the library; and straight ahead, in the circle beneath the statue of Washington, the bronze silhouette of a great Virginian stood sharply cut against the luminous haze of the street. From the chimney-stack of a factory near the river a wreath of gray smoke was flung over the tree-tops, where it broke and drifted in feathery garlands. Across the road a group of three trees was delicately etched, with each separate branch and twig, on the slate-coloured evening sky.

He had passed through the gate when a voice speaking suddenly at his side caused him to start and stop short in his walk. A moment before he had fancied himself alone; he had heard no footsteps; and the place from where the words came was a mere vague blur in the shadows. There was something uncanny in the muffled approach, and the sensation it produced on his nerves was like the shock he used to feel as a child when his hand was unexpectedly touched in the dark.

"I beg your pardon," he said to the vague shape at the foot of a tree. "Did you speak to me?"

The shadows divided, and what seemed to him the edge of darkness moved forward into the dimly lighted space at his side. He saw now that it was the figure of a woman in a long black cloak, with the dilapidated remains of a mourning veil hanging from her small bonnet. As she came toward him he was stirred first by an impulse of pity and immediately afterward by a violent repulsion. In her whole figure there were the tragic signs of poverty and desperation; but it was the horror of her eyes, he told himself, that he should never forget. They were eyes that would haunt his sleep that night like the face of the drowned man in the nursery rhyme.

"Will you tell me," asked the woman hurriedly, "who lives in this house?"

It was a queer question, he thought, for any one to ask in the Square; but she was probably a stranger.

"This is the Governor's house," he answered courteously. "I suppose you are a stranger in town."

"I got here a few hours ago, and I came out for a breath of air. I was four days and nights on the way."

To this he made no reply, and he was about to pass on again, when her voice arrested him.

"You wouldn't mind telling me, would you, the Governor's name?"

"Not in the least. His name is Gideon Vetch."

"Gideon Vetch?" She repeated the name slowly, as if she were impressing it on her memory. "That's a queer name for a Governor. Was he born in this town?"

"I think not."

"And who lives with him? I saw a girl come out awhile ago. Is she his daughter, perhaps—or his wife—though she looked young for that."

"It must have been his daughter. His wife is not living."

"Is she his only child? Or has he others?" There was a quiver of suspense in her voice, and turning he looked at her more closely. Was it possible that she had known Gideon Vetch in his obscure past?

"She is his only child," he replied.

"Well, that's nice for her. Is she pretty?" An odd question if it had been put by a man; but he had been trained to accept the fact that women are different.

"Yes, you would call her pretty." As he spoke the words there flashed through his mind the picture of Patty Vetch as he had seen her that afternoon, in her red cape and her small hat with the red wings, against the snowy hill under the overhanging bough of the sycamore. Was she really pretty, or was it only the witchery of her surroundings? Now that he was out of her presence the attraction had faded. He was still smarting from the memory of that dancing figure.

"Well, it's a fine house," said the woman, "and it looks large for just two people. I thank you for telling me."

The pathos of her words appealed to the generous chivalry of his nature. He felt sorry for her and wondered if he might offer her money.

"I hope you found lodgings," he said.

"Yes, I've found a room near here—on Governor Street, I think they call it."

"And you are not in want? You do not need any help?"

She shook her head while the rusty mourning veil shrouded her features. "Not yet," she answered. "I'm not a beggar yet." Though her tone was not well-bred, he realized that she was neither as uneducated nor as degraded as he had at first believed.

"I am glad of that," he responded; and then lifting his hat again, he hurried quickly away from her up the road beneath the few old linden trees that were left of an avenue. Glancing back as he reached the Capitol building, he saw her black figure moving cautiously over the snow toward one of the gates of the Square.

"That was a nightmare," he thought, "and now for the pleasant dream. I'll go to the old print shop and see my Cousin Corinna."

CHAPTER III

CORINNA OF THE OLD PRINT SHOP

As Stephan left the Square there floated before him a picture of the old print shop in Franklin Street, where Corinna Page (still looking at forty-eight as if she had stepped out of a portrait by Romney) sat amid the rare prints which she never expected to sell. After an unfortunate early marriage, her husband had been Kent Page, her first cousin, she had accepted her recent widowhood, if not with relief, well, obviously with resignation. For years she had wandered about the world with her father, Judge Horatio Lancaster Page, who had once been Ambassador to Great Britain. Now, having recently returned from France, she had settled in a charming country house on the Three Chopt Road, and had opened the ridiculous old print shop, a shop that never sold an engraving, in a quaint place in Franklin Street. She had rented out the upper floors to a half-dozen tenants, had built a couple of rooms beside the kitchen for the caretaker, and had planted two pyramidal cedars and a hedge of box in the short front yard. "A shop is the only place where you may have calls from people who haven't been introduced to you," she had said; and of course as long as she had money to throw away, what did it matter, Stephen reflected, whether she ever sold a picture or not? At forty-eight she was lovelier, he thought, than ever; she would always be lovelier than any one else if she lived to be ninety. There wasn't a girl in his set who could compare with her, who had the glow and charm, the flame-like inner radiance; there wasn't one who had the singing heart of Corinna. Yes, that was the phrase he had been trying to remember, trite as it was—the singing heart—that was Corinna. She had had a hard life, he knew, in spite of her beauty and her wealth; yet she had never lost the quality of youth, the very essence of gaiety and adventure. When he thought of her, Patty Vetch appeared merely cheap and common, though he felt instinctively that Corinna would have liked Patty if she had seen her in the Square with the pigeon. It was a part of Corinna's charm perhaps, certainly a part of her enjoyment of life that she liked almost every one—every one, that is, except Rose Stribling, whom she quite frankly hated. But, then, people said that Rose Stribling, twelve years younger than Corinna and as handsome as a Red Cross poster, had run too often across Kent Page in the first year of the war. Kent Page had died in Prance of Spanish influenza before he ever saw a trench or a battlefield; and Rose