20.  Roger Peyton had gone off to Hot Springs, and Douglas van Tuiver was in New York; so little by little the storms about Castleman Hall began to abate in violence.  Sylvia was absorbed with her baby, and beginning to fit her life into that of her people.  She found many ways in which she could serve them—­entertaining Uncle Mandeville to keep him sober; checking the extravagrance of Celeste; nursing Castleman Lysle through green apple convulsions.  That was to be her life for the future, she told herself, and she was making herself really happy in it—­when suddenly, like a bolt from the blue, came an event that swept her poor little plans into chaos.

It was an afternoon in March, the sun was shining brightly and the Southern springtime was in full tide, and Sylvia had had the old family carriage made ready, with two of the oldest and gentlest family horses, and took the girls upon a shopping expedition to town.  In the front seat sat Celeste, driving, with two of her friends, and in the rear seat was Sylvia, with Peggy and Maria.  When an assemblage of allurements such as this stopped on the streets of the town, the young men would come out of the banks and the offices and gather round to chat.  There would be a halt before an ice-cream parlour, and a big tray of ices would be brought out, and the girls would sit in the carriage and eat, and the boys would stand on the curb and eat—­undismayed by the fact that they had welcomed half a dozen such parties during the afternoon.  The statistics proved that this was a thriving town, with rapidly increasing business, but there was never so much business as to interfere with gallantries like these.

Sylvia enjoyed the scene; it took her back to happy days, before black care had taken his seat behind her.  She sat in a kind of dream, only half hearing the merriment of the young people, and only half tasting her ice.  How she loved this old town, with its streets deep in black spring mud, its mud-plastered “buck-boards” and saddle horses hitched at every telegraph pole!  Its banks and stores and law offices seemed shabbier after one had made the “grand tour,” but they were none the less dear to her for that.  She would spend the rest of her days in Castleman County, and the sunshine and peace would gradually enfold her.

Such were her thoughts when the unforeseen event befel.  A man on horse-back rode down a side-street, crossing Main Street a little way in front of her; a man dressed in khaki, with a khaki riding hat pulled low over his face.  He rode rapidly—­appearing and vanishing, so that Sylvia scarcely saw him—­really did not see him with her conscious mind at all.  Her thoughts were still busy with dreams, and the clatter of boys and girls; but deep within her had begun a tumult—­a trembling, a pounding of the heart, a clamouring under the floors of her consciousness.

And slowly this excitement mounted.  What was the matter, what had happened?  A man had ridden by, but why should a man—.  Surely it could not have been—­no.  There were hundreds of men in Castleman County who wore khaki and rode horse-back, and had sturdy, thick-set figures!  But then, how could she make a mistake?  How could her instinct have betrayed her so?  It was that same view of him as he sat on a horse that had first thrilled her during the hunting party years ago!