Upon this porch a young girl was to be seen busy over a cook stove.

At the noise of the approaching horses the girl turned from her work and looked across the clearing at them.
"Heavens above! who is that, Sybil ?" gasped her brother.
Mrs.Waring-Gaunt gave a delighted little cry.

"Oh, my dear, you are really back." In a moment she was off her horse and rushing toward the girl with her arms outstretched.

"Kathleen, darling! Is it you?
And you have really grown, I believe! Or is it your hair?
Come let me introduce you to my brother." Jack Romayne was a young man with thirty years of experience of the normal life of the well-born Englishman, during which time he had often known what it was to have his senses stirred and his pulses quickened by the sight of one of England's fair women, than whom none of fresher and fairer beauty are to be found in all the world; yet never had he found himself anything but master of his speech and behaviour.

But to-day, when, in obedience to his sister's call, he moved across the little clearing toward the girl standing at her side, he seemed to lose consciousness of himself and control of his powers of action.