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“I love all that,” she said, dreamily, to her maid behind her. “Never mind my hair now; I want the wind to blow it.”

The happy little winds of June, loitering among the lilacs, heard; and they came and blew her bright hair across her eyes, puff after puff of perfumed balm, and stirred the delicate stuff that clung to her, and she felt their caress on her bare feet.

“I mean to go and wade in that river,” she said to her maid. “Dress me very quickly.”

But when she was dressed the desire for childish things had passed away, and she raised her grave eyes to the reflected eyes in the mirror, studying them in silence.

“After all,” she said, aloud, “I am young enough to have found happiness–if they had let me…. The sunshine is full of it, out-doors…. I could have found it…. I was not meant for men…. Still … it is all in the future yet. I will learn not to be afraid.”

She made a little effort to smile at herself in the mirror, but her courage could not carry her as far as that. So, with a quick, quaint gesture of adieu, she turned and walked rapidly out into the hallway.

Miss Garcide was in bed, sneezing patiently. “I won’t be out for weeks,” said the poor lady, “so you will have to amuse yourself alone.”

Miss Castle kissed her and went away lightly down the polished stairs to the great hall.

The steward came up to wish her good-morning, and to place the resources of the club at her disposal.

“I don’t know,” she said, hesitating at the veranda door; “I think a sun-bath is all I care for. You may hang a hammock under the maples, if you will. I suppose,” she added, “that I am quite alone at the club?”

“One gentleman arrived this morning,” said the steward–“Mr. Crawford.”

She looked back, poised lightly in the doorway through which the morning sunshine poured. All the color had left her face. “Mr. Crawford,” she said, in a dull voice.

“He has gone out after trout,” continued the steward, briskly; “he is a rare rod, ma’am, is Mr. Crawford. He caught the eight-pound fish–perhaps you noticed it on the panel in the billiard-room.”

Miss Castle came into the hall again, and stepped over to the register. Under her signature, “Miss Castle and maid,” she saw “J. Crawford, New York.” The ink was still blue and faint.

She turned and walked out into the sunshine.

The future was no longer a gray, menacing future; it had become suddenly the terrifying present, and its shadow fell sharply around her in the sunshine.

Now all the courage of her race must be summoned, and must respond to the summons. The end of all was at hand; but when had a Castle ever flinched at the face of fate under any mask?

She raised her resolute head; her eyes matched the sky–clear, unclouded, fathomless.

In hours of deep distress the sound of her own voice had always helped her to endure; and now, as she walked across the lawn bareheaded, she told herself not to grieve over a just debt to be paid, not to quail because life held for her nothing of what she had dreamed.

If there was a tremor now and then in her low voice, none but the robins heard it; if she lay flung face downward in the grasses, under the screen of alders by the water, there was no one but the striped chipmunk to jeer and mock.

“Now listen, you silly girl,” she whispered; “he cannot take away the sky and the sunshine from you! He cannot blind and deafen you, silly! Cry if you must, you little coward!–you will marry him all the same.”

Suddenly sitting up, alert, she heard something singing. It was the river flowing close beside her.

She pushed away the screen of leaves and stretched out full length, looking down into the water.

A trout lay there; his eyes were shining with an opal tint, his scarlet spots blazed like jewels.