“Beside this stone wall I want flowers,” Lydia was saying to her landscape-gardener, as she persisted in calling Jim Dodge. “Hollyhocks and foxgloves and pinies—I shall never say peony in Brookville—and pansies, sweet williams, lads' love, iris and sweetbrier. Mrs. Daggett has promised to give me some roots.”

He avoided her eyes as she faced him in the bright glow of the morning sunlight.

“Very well, Miss Orr,” he said, with cold respect. “You want a border here about four feet wide, filled with old-fashioned perennials.”

He had been diligent in his study of the books she had supplied him with.

“A herbaceous border of that sort in front of the stone wall will give quite the latest effect in country-house decoration,” he went on professionally. “Ramblers of various colors might be planted at the back, and there should be a mixture of bulbs among the taller plants to give color in early spring.”

She listened doubtfully.

“I don't know about the ramblers,” she said. “Were there ramblers—twenty years ago? I want it as nearly as possible just as it was. Mrs. Daggett told me yesterday about the flower-border here. You—of course you don't remember the place at all; do you?”

He reddened slightly under her intent gaze.

“Oh, I remember something about it,” he told her; “the garden was a long time going down. There were flowers here a few years back; but the grass and weeds got the better of them.”

“And do you—remember the Boltons?” she persisted. “I was so interested in what Mrs. Daggett told me about the family yesterday. It seems strange to think no one has lived here since. And now that I—it is to be my home, I can't help thinking about them.”

“You should have built a new house,” said Jim Dodge. “A new house would have been better and cheaper, in the end.”

He thrust his spade deep, a sign that he considered the conversation at an end.

“Tell one of the other men to dig this,” she objected. “I want to make a list of the plants we need and get the order out.”

“I can do that tonight, Miss Orr,” he returned, going on with his digging. “The men are busy in the orchards this morning.”

“You want me to go away,” she inferred swiftly.

He flung down his spade.

“It is certainly up to me to obey orders,” he said. “Pardon me, if I seem to have forgotten the fact. Shall we make the list now?”

Inwardly he was cursing himself for his stupidity. Perhaps he had been mistaken the night before. His fancy had taken a swift leap in the dark and landed—where? There was a sort of scornful honesty in Jim Dodge's nature which despised all manner of shams and petty deceits. His code also included a strict minding of his own business. He told himself rather sharply that he was a fool for suspecting that Lydia Orr was other than she had represented herself to be. She had been crying the night before. What of that? Other girls cried over night and smiled the next morning—his sister Fanny, for example. It was an inexplicable habit of women. His mother had once told him, rather vaguely, that it did her good to have a regular crying-spell. It relieved her nerves, she said, and sort of braced her up....

“Of course I didn't mean that,” Lydia was at some pains to explain, as the two walked toward the veranda where there were chairs and a table.

She was looking fair and dainty in a gown of some thin white stuff, through which her neck and arms showed slenderly.

“It's too warm to dig in the ground this morning,” she decided. “And anyway, planning the work is far more important.”

“Than doing it?” he asked quizzically. “If we'd done nothing but plan all this; why you see—”

He made a large gesture which included the carpenters at work on the roof, painters perilously poised on tall ladders and a half dozen men busy spraying the renovated orchards.

“I see,” she returned with a smile, “—now that you've so kindly pointed it out to me.”

He leveled a keen glance at her. It was impossible not to see her this morning in the light of what he thought he had discovered the night before.

“I've done nothing but make plans all my life,” she went on gravely. “Ever since I can remember I've been thinking—thinking and planning what I should do when I grew up. It seemed such a long, long time—being just a little girl, I mean, and not able to do what I wished. But I kept on thinking and planning, and all the while I was growing up; and then at last—it all happened as I wished.”

She appeared to wait for his question. But he remained silent, staring at the blue rim of distant hills.

“You don't ask me—you don't seem to care what I was planning,” she said, her voice timid and uncertain.

He glanced quickly at her. Something in her look stirred him curiously. It did not occur to him that her appeal and his instant response to it were as old as the race.

“I wish you would tell me,” he urged. “Tell me everything!”

She drew a deep breath, her eyes misty with dreams.

“For a long time I taught school,” she went on, “but I couldn't save enough that way. I never could have saved enough, even if I had lived on bread and water. I wanted—I needed a great deal of money, and I wasn't clever nor particularly well educated. Sometimes I thought if I could only marry a millionaire—”

He stared at her incredulously.

“You don't mean that,” he said with some impatience.

She sighed.

“I'm telling you just what happened,” she reminded him. “It seemed the only way to get what I wanted. I thought I shouldn't mind that, or—anything, if I could only have as much money as I needed.”

A sense of sudden violent anger flared up within him. Did the girl realize what she was saying?

She glanced up at him.

“I never meant to tell any one about that part of it,” she said hurriedly. “And—it wasn't necessary, after all; I got the money another way.”

He bit off the point of a pencil he had been sharpening with laborious care.

“I should probably never have had a chance to marry a millionaire,” she concluded reminiscently. “I'm not beautiful enough.”

With what abominable clearness she understood the game: the marriage-market; the buyer and the price.

“I—didn't suppose you were like that,” he muttered, after what seemed a long silence.

She seemed faintly surprised.

“Of course you don't know me,” she said quickly. “Does any man know any woman, I wonder?”

“They think they do,” he stated doggedly; “and that amounts to the same thing.”

His thoughts reverted for an uncomfortable instant to Wesley Elliot and Fanny. It was only too easy to see through Fanny.

“Most of them are simple souls, and thank heaven for it!”

His tone was fervently censorious.

She smiled understandingly.

“Perhaps I ought to tell you further that a rich man—not a millionaire; but rich enough—actually did ask me to marry him, and I refused.”

“H'mph!”

“But,” she added calmly, “I think I should have married him, if I had not had money left me first—before he asked me, I mean. I knew all along that what I had determined to do, I could do best alone.”

He stared at her from under gathered brows. He still felt that curious mixture of shame and anger burning hotly within.

“Just why are you telling me all this?” he demanded roughly.

She returned his look quietly.

“Because,” she said, “you have been trying to guess my secret for a long time and you have succeeded; haven't you?”

He was speechless.

“You have been wondering about me, all along. I could see that, of course. I suppose everybody in Brookville has been wondering and—and talking. I meant to be frank and open about it—to tell right out who I was and what I came to do. But—somehow—I couldn't.... It didn't seem possible, when everybody—you see I thought it all happened so long ago people would have forgotten. I supposed they would be just glad to get their money back. I meant to give it to them—all, every dollar of it. I didn't care if it took all I had.... And then—I heard you last night when you crossed the library. I hoped—you would ask me why—but you didn't. I thought, first, of telling Mrs. Daggett; she is a kind soul. I had to tell someone, because he is coming home soon, and I may need—help.”

Her eyes were solemn, beseeching, compelling.

His anger died suddenly, leaving only a sort of indignant pity for her unfriended youth.

“You are—” he began, then stopped short. A painter was swiftly descending his ladder, whistling as he came.

“My name,” she said, without appearing to notice, “is............