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Nothing would have astonished her world more than to learn that little Miss Blythe had a secret, darkly hidden quality of which she was dreadfully ashamed. At heart she was nothing if not sentimental and romantic. And often when she was thought to be sleeping the dreamless sleep of the trained athlete who stores up energy for the morrow’s contest, she was sitting at the windows in her night-gown, looking at the moon (in hers) and weaving all sorts of absurd adventures about herself and her particular fancy of the moment.

It would be a surprise and pleasure to some men, a tragedy perhaps to others, if they should learn that little Miss Blythe had fancied them all at different times, almost to the boiling point, and that in her own deeply concealed imagination Jim had rescued her from pirates and Jack from a burning hotel, or that just as her family were selling her to a rich widower, John had appeared on his favorite hunter and carried her off. The truth is that little Miss Blythe had engaged in a hundred love affairs concerning which no one but herself was the wiser.

And at twenty-three it was high time for her to marry and settle down. First because she couldn’t go on playing games and showing horses forever, and second because she wanted to. But with whom she wanted to marry and settle down she could not for the life of her have said. Sometimes she thought that it would be with Mr. Blagdon. He was rich and he was a widower; but wherever she went he managed to go, and he had some of the finest horses in the world, and he wouldn’t take no for an answer. Sometimes she said to the moon:

“I’ll give myself a year, and if at the end of that time I don’t like anybody better than Bob, why….” Or, in a different mood, “I’m tired of everything I do; if he happens to ask me to-morrow I’ll say yes.” Or, “I’ve ridden his horses, and broken his golf clubs, and borrowed his guns (and he won’t lend them to anybody else), and I suppose I’ve got to pay him back.” Or, “I really do like him a lot,” or “I really don’t like him at all.”

Then there came into this young woman’s life Mister Masters. And he blushed his blush and smiled his crooked smile and looked at her when she wasn’t looking at him (and she knew that he was looking) and was unable to say as much as “Boo” to her; and in the hidden springs of her nature that which she had always longed for happened, and became, and was. And one night she said to the moon: “I know it isn’t proper for me to be so attentive to him, and I know everybody is talking about it, but–” and she rested her beautiful brown chin on her shapely, strong, brown hands, and a tear like a diamond stood in each of her unbelievably blue eyes, and she looked at the moon, and said: “But it’s Harry Masters or–bust!”

Mr. Bob Blagdon, the rich widower, had been content to play a waiting game; for he knew very well that beneath her good-nature little Miss Blythe had a proud temper and was to be won rather by the man who should make himself indispensable to her than by him who should be forever pestering her with speaking and pleading his cause. She is an honest girl, he told himself, and without thinking of consequences she is always putting herself under obligations to me. Let her ride down lover’s lane with young Blank or young Dash, she will not be able to forget that she is on my favorite mare. In his soul he felt a certain proprietorship in little Miss Blythe; but to this his ruddy, dark-mustached face and slow-moving eyes were a screen.