Susan, be it understood, was by no means an ill-favored woman even in her old-fashioned dress.  She had a very good complexion, blue eyes, large and dark and warm; and a mouth of some character, with mobile lips and bright even teeth.  But nobody had ever called her handsome till to-day, neither had anybody called her plain.  She had simply passed unmarked.  But what she had all along needed was somebody to develop her resources, somebody to do just what had been done to-day—­to get her into a dress that would bring out her clear complexion, that would harmonize with the shade of her earnest eyes; to take her hair out of that hard twist at the back of the head, and lay it tiara-like, a bright mass, above the brow; to substitute soft lace for stiff, glazed linen, and a graceful knot of ribbon for that rectangular piece of gold with a faded ambrotype in it called a breastpin.  And, too, she needed that walk she took in the crisp air to bring the glow into her cheek; and then she needed that meeting with Mr. Falconer, which chanced in that walk, to heighten the glow and to brighten her already pleased eyes.  The meeting took place at the door of her house.  It was an arrested, lingering look which he gave her, and doubtless it was the character of this look, conscious and significant, that deepened the glow in her face,

“I wonder if I affected him like a fine picture or a fine strain of music?” Susan asked herself in passing him.

“Miss Summerhaze must be acting on the hint I gave her,” thought Mr. Falconer; and he went on with a little smile about his mouth.  It pleased him to think he had influenced her.

Thus it was that this man and this woman came to think of each other.  And now you are guessing that this thinking of each other advanced into a warmer interest—­that these two people fell in love if they were not too far gone in years for such nonsense.  Well for us all that there are hearts that are never too old for the sweet nonsense—­the nonsense that is more sensible than half the philosophy of the sages.  Your guess is so good that I should feel chagrined if I were one of those writers who delight in mysteries and in surprising the reader.  But my highest aim is to tell a straight-forward story, so I acknowledge the guess correct, so far, at least, as my Susan is concerned.  I have said that the romance in her nature died hard; but it never died at all.  This man, this almost stranger, was rousing it as warmth and light stir the sleeping asphodels of spring.  The foolish Susan came to think of Mr. Falconer whenever she made her toilet—­to thrill at every sight of him and at his lightest word.  But this was not till after many other meetings and interviews than those this story has recorded.  As Mr. Falconer was frequently at the house which Susan built, and as this was less than a block removed from the one she occupied, there naturally occurred many a chance meeting, when some significant glance or word would send Susan’s heart searching for its meaning.