armor and had carried a shield. Straightway he filled her dreams day and night. She did not fall in love; she flung herself in.

Mrs. Loomis, at first amused, was next bewildered, then concerned at discovering that a perfect stranger had so completely carried Nancy off her feet. But when she learned that the young man was the guest of a sister who had lately married into one of the old families of the neighborhood, that his parents were people of standing in the city, that he was just graduated from college and bore a record above reproach,—"sans peur, sans reproche," as Nancy loved to say,—she made no objection to the engagement.

Indeed, Mrs. Loomis was not a born objector. The line of least resistance was usually hers, partly no doubt because of physical weakness. Ira and Parthenia, commonly known as Unc. Iry and Aunt Parthy, relieved her of most of her household cares. She occupied the ancestral home of the Loomises, which she was able to keep up by means of an income inherited from her husband. Her business matters were looked after by the old lawyer who had managed Loomis affairs since the day that he took his father's place in the dingy office on the main street of the county town.

As for Nancy, she had grown up pretty much as she pleased, had been under the care of governesses good, bad or indifferent, had read, not wisely but too well, whatever came her way, had been away at school for two years, coming home always for week-ends and between whiles, too, if she felt so disposed, but in one way or another absorbing a deal of information of a desultory sort. Languages she found easy and a French governess had trained her into a sufficient knowledge of her tongue to enable her to speak it rather fluently. Music was her chief talent. She played readily by ear, but hated to be bound down by technical exercises, and in her earlier years was not compelled to do so, since Mrs. Loomis did not insist. However, the old German professor at school scared her into a carefulness she had previously scorned, and at last she came to be his star pupil, continuing her lessons after she had left school. As for her schoolmates, most of them lived too far away for her to visit after her school days were over, and though she kept up a desultory correspondence with one or two she was not intimate with any special one. One or two holiday visits to New York had given her some idea of life in the metropolis, but the days spent in a big hotel did not specially charm her, and, while they dispelled some of her illusions, they did not interfere with her day dreams. Back again in her country home she was ready to enter again her world of romance and dream away the 

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