"Isn't it? Too good to waste. Does any one want to walk back to Grasslands?" 

 Suzanne, one foot on the step, stopped and turned to him. Her lips opened to speak, and then she saw the back of his head and heard him address Esther: 

 "How about it, Miss Maitland? You're a walker, and it's only a step by the wood path. We can be there almost as soon as the car." 

 "You'll get wet," said Mrs. Janney, "the woods will be dripping." 

 Mr. Janney remembered his youth and egged them on: 

 "Only underfoot and they can change their shoes. Dick's right—it's too good to waste. I'd go myself but I'm afraid of my rheumatism. Hurry up, Suzanne, and get in. They want to start." 

 Miss Maitland said she wasn't afraid of the wet and that it would not hurt her slippers. Suzanne entered the car and sunk into her corner. As it rolled away Mr. and Mrs. Janney looked back at the two figures in the moonlight and waved good-byes. Suzanne sat motionless; all the way home she said nothing. 

 CHAPTER IV—THE CIGAR BAND

Esther and Ferguson walked across the open spaces of lawn and then entered the woods. Ferguson had set the pace as slow, but he noticed that she quickened it, faring along beside him with a light, swift step. He also noticed that she was quiet, as she had been at dinner; as if she was abstracted, not like herself. 

 He had seen a good deal of her lately and thought of her a good deal—thought many things. One was that she was interesting, provocative in her quiet reserve, not as easy to see through as most women. She was clever, used her brains; he had formed a habit of talking to her on matters that he never spoke of with other girls. And he admired her looks, nothing cheap about them; "thoroughbred" was the word that always rose to his mind as he greeted her. It seemed to him all wrong that she should be working for a wage as the Janneys' hireling, for, though he was "advanced" in his opinions, when it came to women there was a strain of sentimentality in his make-up. 

 On the wood path he let her go ahead, seeing her figure spattered with white lights that ran across her shoulders and up and down her back. They had walked in silence for some minutes when he suddenly said: 

 "What's amiss?" 

 She slackened her gait so 

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