As to the effect upon Sylvia, father exhibits much concern, and no little anxiety, for he has read her as a nature in some respects old for her twenty-one years, and in others, the side of the feminine, wholly young and unawakened, so that this jar, he thinks, comes at a most critical moment.

He has a pretty theory that the untroubled heart of a young girl is like a vessel full of the fresh spring sap of the sugar maple that is being freed by slow fire from its crudities and condensed to tangible form.  When a certain point is reached, it is ready to crystallize about the first object that stirs it ever so lightly, irrespective of its quality:  this is first love.  But if the condensing process is lingering, no jar disturbing it prematurely until, as it reaches perfection, the vital touch suddenly reaches its depths, then comes real love, perfected at first sight, clinging everlastingly to the object, love that endures by its own strength, not by mere force of habit; and this love belongs only to the heart’s springtime, before full consciousness has made it speculative.

* * * * *

When Horace Bradford drove homeward the afternoon of the fete, he was in a brown study, having no realization of time or place until the wise horse turned in at the barnyard gate, and after standing a moment by his usual hitching post, looked over his shoulder and gave a whinny to attract his master’s attention.  Then Horace started up, shook off his lethargy, and hurried to the porch, where his mother stood waiting, to give her the roses, and Sylvia’s message.

Mrs. Bradford was, for one of her reserve, almost childishly eager to hear of the experiences of the afternoon, and was prepared to sit down comfortably on the porch and have her son give a full account of it; but instead, he gave her a few rather incoherent details, and leaving her standing with the splendid roses held close to her face, very much in Sylvia’s own attitude, he hurried up to his room, where she could hear him moving about as if unpacking his things, and opening and shutting drawers nervously.

“Never mind,” she said softly to herself, “he will tell me all about her when he is ready.  Meanwhile, I’ll wait, and not get in his way,—­that is what mothers are for.”  But by some strange impulse she loosened the string that bound the roses, and placed them in one of her few treasures, a silver bowl, in the centre of the supper table, and going to her bedchamber, which was, country fashion, back of the sitting room, arrayed herself in Horace’s gifts,—­the silk gown and fichu, with the onyx bar and butterflies to fasten it,—­and then returned to the porch to watch the twilight gently veil sunset.

Upstairs, Horace unpacked his trunks in a rebellious mood.  In the morning he had felt in the proper sense self-sufficient and contented,—­the position, which a few months before he thought perhaps ten years ahead of him, had suddenly dropped at his feet, and he felt a natural elation, though it stopped quite short of self-conceit.  He could afford to relax the grip with which he had been holding himself in check, and face the knowledge that he loved Sylvia; while the fact that fate had brought her to summer in his vicinity seemed but another proof that fortune was smiling upon him.