straight pleatless skirts that fell to her trim ankles and buckled leather shoes.  She was fresh and cool, wholesome and clean, free and unfettered; indeed, her beauty seemed only an afterthought or accident.  So much so that when Peter saw her afterwards, amidst the billowy, gauzy, and challenging graces of the officer’s wives, who were dressed in their best and prettiest frocks to welcome her, the eye turned naturally from that suggestion of enhancement to the girl who seemed to defy it.  She was clearly not an idealized memory, a spirit or a ghost, but naturalistic and rosy; he thought a trifle rosier, as she laughingly addressed him:—­

“I suppose it isn’t quite fair to surprise you like that,” she said, with an honest girlish hand-shake, “for you see I know all about you now, and what you are doing here, and even when you were expected; and I dare say you thought we were still in England, if you remembered us at all.  And we haven’t met since that day at Ashley Church when I put my foot in it,—­or rather on your pet protege’s, the Indian’s:  you remember Major Atherly’s tomb?  And to think that all the while we didn’t know that you were a public man and a great political reformer, and had a fad like this.  Why, we’d have got up meetings for you, and my father would have presided,—­he’s always fond of doing these things,—­and we’d have passed resolutions, and given you subscriptions, and Bibles, and flannel shirts, and revolvers—­but I believe you draw the line at that.  My brother was saying only the other day that you weren’t half praised enough for going in for this sort of thing when you were so rich, and needn’t care.  And so that’s why you rushed away from Ashley Grange,—­just to come here and work out your mission?”

His whole life, his first wild Californian dream, his English visit, the revelation of Gray Eagle, the final collapse of his old beliefs, were whirling through his brain to the music of this clear young voice.  And by some cruel irony of circumstance it seemed now to even mock his later dreams of expiation as it also called back his unhappy experience of the last week.

“Have you—­have you”—­he stammered with a faint smile, “seen my sister?”

“Not yet,” said Lady Elfrida.  “I believe she is not well and is confined to her room; you will introduce me, won’t you?” she added eagerly.  “Of course, when we heard that there was an Atherly here we inquired about you; and I told them you were a relation of ours,” she went on with a half-mischievous shyness,—­“you remember the de Bracys,—­and they seemed surprised and rather curious.  I suppose one does not talk so much about these things over here, and I dare say you have so much to occupy your mind you don’t talk of us in England.”  With the quickness of a refined perception she saw a slight shade in his face, and changed the subject.  “And we have had such a jolly time; we have met so many pleasant people; and they’ve all been so awfully