After a pause, in which her needle flew mournfully, she added:  “I hope for your own sake that you will marry some good man before you lose your attractions.  Poor Becky Bollingbroke proved to me how unfortunate it is for a woman to remain unmarried.”

For an instant Gabriella looked at her mother without replying.  She felt tempted—­strongly tempted, she told herself—­to say something cross.  Then the sight of the bent gray head, of the bowed shoulders, of the knotted needle-pricked fingers, pierced her heart.  Though she could not always agree with her mother, she loved her devotedly, and the thought that she must lose her some day had been the most terrible nightmare of her childhood.

“Don’t worry about me, mother, dear,” she answered tenderly.  “I can always take care of myself.  I can manage my life, you know that, don’t you?” Then she stopped quickly while her heart gave a single bound and lay quiet.  She had heard the click of the gate, and a minute later, as Mrs. Carr gathered up her sewing, there was a ring at the bell.

“It can’t be a visitor before supper, can it, Gabriella?”

“I think not, mother, but I shouldn’t run away if I were you.”

“I’d better go.  I don’t feel dressed.  Wait a minute, Marthy, and let me get out of the room before you open the door.”  She fled, clutching her work-basket, while Gabriella, turning to lower the flaming wick of the lamp, heard George’s voice at the door and his footsteps crossing the hall.

“I knew something would happen,” she thought wildly, as she went forward to meet him.

“I saw you pull down the shade as I was going by,” he began rather lamely; and she hardly heard his words because of the divine tumult in her brain.  Her heart sang; her pulses throbbed; every drop of her blood seemed to become suddenly alive with ecstasy.  Under the tarnished garlands of the chandelier his face looked younger, gayer, more intensely vivid than it had looked in her dreams.  It was the face of her dreams made real; but with what a difference!  She saw his crisp brown hair brushed smoothly back from its parting, his blue eyes, with their gay and conquering look, the firm red brown of his cheek, and even the bluish shadow encircling his shaven mouth.  In his eyes, which said enchanting things, she could not read the trivial and commonplace quality of his soul—­for he was not only a man, he was romance, he was adventure, he was the radiant miracle of youth!

“Florrie told me this morning that you had come back,” she answered coldly, as she held out her hand.

Her words seemed to come to her from a distance—­from the next room, from the street outside, from the farthest star—­but while she uttered them, she knew that her words meant nothing.  She shed her joy as if it were fragrance; and her softness was like the magnolia-scented softness of the June night.  Even her mother would not have known her, so greatly had she changed in a minute.  Of the businesslike