“Well, whatever route he took, it is astonishing that he knew the way to Lydford at all,” commented Mrs. Marshall-Smith.  “I don’t believe you’ve been here before for years!” she said to Page.

“It’s my confounded shyness,” he explained, turning to Sylvia with a twinkle.  “The grand, sophisticated ways of Lydford are too much for the nerves of a plain-living rustic like me.  When I farm in Vermont the spirit of the place takes hold of me.  I’m quite apt to eat my pie with my knife, and Lydford wouldn’t like that.”

Sylvia was aware, through the laughter which followed this joking remark, that there was an indefinable stir around the table.  His turning to her had been pronounced.  She took a sore pleasure in Morrison’s eclipse.  For the first time he was not the undisputed center of that circle.  He accepted it gravely, a little preoccupied, a little absent, a wonderfully fine and dignified figure.  Under her misanthropic exultation, Sylvia felt again and again the stab of her immense admiration for him, her deep affinity for his way of conducting life.  Whatever place he might take in the circle around the luncheon table, she found him inevitably at the center of all her own thoughts.  However it might seem to those evidently greatly struck with her extraordinary good luck, her triumph was in reality only the most pitiful of pretenses.  But such as it was, and it gleamed richly enough on the eyes of the onlookers, she shook it out with a flourish and gave no sign of heartsick qualms.  She gave a brilliantly undivided attention to the bit of local history Page was telling her, of a regiment of Green Mountain Boys who had gone down to the Battle of Bennington over the pass between Windward and Hemlock Mountain, and she was able to stir Page to enthusiasm by an appreciative comparison of their march with the splendid and affecting incident before Marathon, when the thousand hoplites from the little town of Plataea crossed the Cithaeron range and went down to the plain to join the Athenians in their desperate stand.

“How do you happen to come East just now, anyhow?” inquired old Mr. Sommerville, resolutely shouldering his way into the conversation.

“My yellow streak!” affirmed his nephew.  “Colorado got too much for me.  And besides, I was overcome by an atavistic longing to do chores.”  He turned to Sylvia again, the gesture as unconscious and simple as a boy’s.  “My great-grandfather was a native of these parts, and about once in so often I revert to type.”

“All my mother’s people came from this region too,” Sylvia said.  She added meditatively, “And I think I must have reverted to type—­up there on the mountain, this morning.”

He looked at her silently, with softening eyes.

“You’ll be going back soon, I suppose, as usual!” said old Mr. Sommerville with determination.

“To Colorado?” inquired Page.  “No, I think—­I’ve a notion I’ll stay on this summer for some time.  There is an experiment I want to try with alfalfa in Vermont.”