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Rh twenty-five?" She wondered if he was just making fun of her then, or if he meant that? The fine lines about one's eyes … he had said something of that sort. Her glass hadn't shown them. Today she didn't look more than seventeen or eighteen, and she knew it. … She laughed softly as she bent her head to avoid a low fir branch.

"I'll show him," she meditated, "that a Corliss promise is as good as gold though made lightly and to the most bitter of enemies or negligible of individuals; that I waste no more thought on Bill Steele than on a chipmunk."

Then, visualizing both the big bulk of Steele and the tiny body of the scampering little animal to whom she had likened him, she startled her horse by laughing gaily to herself. Then, in duty bound, she puckered her brows disapprovingly.

Down by the ford where the little meadow was and where Steele's horse still browsed and dozed and otherwise disported itself contentedly, she came upon Steele himself, his eyes brightening as they filled to the fresh beauty of her. He had admitted to himself … to no one else … the fine quality of her loveliness that other day when she received him in her well fitting house dress. Now, her lithe slender form in the most becoming of riding habits, her cheeks warm with the ride, her eyes glowing, her mouth redder, he thought, than ever mouth was before, he found her utterly perfect from the top of her head of curling brown hair to the soles of her black, spurred boots. And so the thing he said by way of welcome was: