The Reverend Wesley Elliot, looking young, eager and pleasingly worldly in a blue serge suit of unclerical cut, rose to greet her as she entered.

“I haven't been here in two or three days,” he began, as he took the hand she offered, “and I'm really astonished at the progress you've been making.”

He still retained her hand, as he smiled down into her grave, preoccupied face.

“What's the trouble with our little lady of Bolton House?” he inquired. “Any of the workmen on strike, or—”

She withdrew her hand with a faint smile.

“Everything is going very well, I think,” she told him.

He was still scrutinizing her with that air of intimate concern, which inspired most of the women of his flock to unburden themselves of their manifold anxieties at his slightest word of encouragement.

“It's a pretty heavy burden for you,” he said gravely. “You need some one to help you. I wonder if I couldn't shoulder a few of the grosser details?”

“You've already been most kind,” Lydia said evasively. “But now— Oh, I think everything has been thought of. You know Mr. Whittle is looking after the work.”

He smiled, a glimmer of humorous understanding in his fine dark eyes. “Yes, I know,” he said.

A silence fell between them. Lydia was one of those rare women who do not object to silence. It seemed to her that she had always lived alone with her ambitions, which could not be shared, and her bitter knowledge, which was never to be spoken of. But now she stirred uneasily in her chair, aware of the intent expression in his eyes. Her troubled thoughts reverted to the little picture which had fluttered to the floor from somebody's keeping only an hour before.

“I've had visitors this morning,” she told him, with purpose.

“Ah! people are sure to be curious and interested,” he commented.

“They were Mrs. Dodge and her daughter and Mrs. Dix and Ellen,” she explained.

“That must have been pleasant,” he murmured perfunctorily. “Are you—do you find yourself becoming at all interested in the people about here? Of course it is easy to see you come to us from quite another world.”

She shook her head.

“Oh, no,” she said quickly. “—If you mean that I am superior in any way to the people of Brookville; I'm not, at all. I am really a very ordinary sort of a person. I've not been to college and—I've always worked, harder than most, so that I've had little opportunity for—culture.”

His smile broadened into a laugh of genuine amusement.

“My dear Miss Orr,” he protested, “I had no idea of intimating—”

Her look of passionate sincerity halted his words of apology.

“I am very much interested in the people here,” she declared. “I want—oh, so much—to be friends with them! I want it more than anything else in the world! If they would only like me. But—they don't.”

“How can they help it?” he exclaimed. “Like you? They ought to worship you! They shall!”

She shook her head sadly.

“No one can compel love,” she said.

“Sometimes the love of one can atone for the indifference—even the hostility of the many,” he ventured.

But she had not stooped to the particular, he perceived. Her thoughts were ranging wide over an unknown country whither, for the moment, he could not follow. He studied her abstracted face with its strangely aloof expression, like that of a saint or a fanatic, with a faint renewal of previous misgivings.

“I am very much interested in Fanny Dodge,” she said abruptly.

“In—Fanny Dodge?” he repeated.

He became instantly angry with himself for the dismayed astonishment he had permitted to escape him, and increasingly so because of the uncontrollable tide of crimson which invaded his face.

She was looking at him, with the calm, direct gaze which had more than once puzzled him.

“You know her very well, don't you?”

“Why, of course, Miss Dodge is—she is—er—one of our leading young people, and naturally— She plays our little organ in church and Sunday School. Of course you've noticed. She is most useful and—er—helpful.”

Lydia appeared to be considering his words with undue gravity.

“But I didn't come here this morning to talk to you about another woman,” he said, with undeniable hardihood. “I want to talk to you—to you—and what I have to say—”

Lydia got up from her chair rather suddenly.

“Please excuse me a moment,” she said, quite as if he had not spoken.

He heard her cross the hall swiftly. In a moment she had returned.

“I found this picture on the floor—after they had gone,” she said, and handed him the photograph.

He stared at it with unfeigned astonishment.

“Oh, yes,” he murmured. “Well—?”

“Turn it over,” she urged, somewhat breathlessly.

He obeyed, and bit his lip angrily.

“What of it?” he demanded. “A quotation from Kipling's Recessional—a mere commonplace.... Yes; I wrote it.”

Then his anger suddenly left him. His mind had leaped to the solution of the matter, and the solution appeared to Wesley Elliot as eminently satisfying; it was even amusing. What a transparent, womanly little creature she was, to be sure! He had not been altogether certain of himself as he walked out to the old Bolton place that morning. But oddly enough, this girlish jealousy of hers, this pretty spite—he found it piquantly charming.

“I wrote it,” he repeated, his indulgent understanding of her mood lurking in smiling lips and eyes, “on the occasion of a particularly grubby Sunday School picnic: I assure you I shall not soon forget the spiders which came to an untimely end in my lemonade, nor the inquisitive ants which explored my sandwiches.”

She surveyed him unsmilingly.

“But you did not mean that,” she said. “You were thinking of something—quite different.”

He frowned thoughtfully. Decidedly, this matter should be settled between them at once and for ever. A clergyman, he reflected, must always be on friendly—even confidential terms with a wide variety of women. His brief experience had already taught him this much. And a jealous or unduly suspicious wife might prove a serious handicap to future success.

“Won't you sit down,” he urged. “I—You must allow me to explain. We—er—must talk this over.”

She obeyed him mechanically. All at once she was excessively frightened at what she had attempted. She knew nothing of the ways of men; but she felt suddenly sure that he would resent her interference as an unwarrantable impertinence.

“I thought—if you were going there today—you might take it—to her,” she hesitated. “Or, I could send it. It is a small matter, of course.”

“I think,” he said gravely, “that it is a very serious matter.”

She interpreted uncertainly the intent gaze of his beautiful, somber eyes.

“I came here,” she faltered, “to—to find a home. I had no wish—”

............