Little-Lovely Leila was Little-Lonely Leila now.  Yet after her collapse at the boat, she had shown her courage.  She had put away childish things and was developing into a steadfast little woman, who busied herself with making her father happy.  She watched over him and waited on him.  And he who loved her wondered at her unexpected strength, not knowing that she was saying to herself, “I am a wife—­not a child.  And I mustn’t make it hard for father—­I mustn’t make it hard for anybody.  And when Barry comes back I shall be better fitted to share his life if I have learned to be brave.”

She wrote to Barry—­such cheerful letters, and one of them sent him to Gordon.

“It would have been better if I had brought her with me,” he said, as he read extracts; “she’s a little thing, Gordon, but she’s a wonder.  And she’s the prop on which I lean.”

“Presently you will be the prop,” Gordon responded, “and that’s what a husband should be, Barry, as you’ll find out when you’re married.”

When!—­if Gordon had only known how Barry dreamed of Leila—­in her yellow gown, trudging by his side toward the church on the hill—­dancing in the moonlight, a primrose swaying on its stem.  How unquestioning had been her faith in him!  And he must prove himself worthy of that faith.

And he did prove it by a steadiness which astonished Gordon, and by an industry which was almost unnatural, and he wrote to Leila, “I shall show them, dear heart, and then they’ll let me have you.”

It was on the night after Leila received this letter that Porter came to take her for a ride.

“Ask Mary to go with us,” he said; “she won’t go with me alone.”

Leila’s glance was sympathetic.  “Did she say she wouldn’t?”

“I asked her.  And she said she was—­tired.  As if a ride wouldn’t rest her,” hotly.

“It would.  You let me try her, Porter.”

Leila’s voice at the telephone was coaxing.  “I want to go, Mary, dear, and Dad is busy at the Capitol, and——­”

“But I said I wouldn’t.”

“Porter won’t care, just so he gets you.  He’s at my elbow now, listening.  And he says you are to ask Aunt Isabelle, and sit with her on the back seat if you want to be fussy.”

“Leila,” Porter was protesting, “I didn’t say anything of the kind.”

She went on regardless, “Well, if he didn’t say it he meant it.  And we want you, both of us, awfully.”

Leila hanging up the receiver shook her head at Porter.  “You don’t know how to manage Mary.  If you’d stay away from her for weeks—­and not try to see her—­she’d begin to wonder where you were.”

“No she wouldn’t.”  Porter’s tone was weighted with woe.  “She’d simply be glad, and she’d sit in her Tower Rooms and write letters to Roger Poole, and forget that I was on the earth.”

It was out now—­all his flaming jealousy.  Leila stared at him.  “Oh, Porter,” she asked, breathlessly, “do you really think that she cares for Roger?”