WHEN the old Commoner's private physician had gone and his mind had fully cleared, he would sit for hours in the sunshine of the vineclad porch, asking Elsie of the village, its life, and its people. He smiled good-naturedly at her eager sympathy for their sufferings as at the enthusiasm of a child who could not understand. He had come possessed by a great idea—events must submit to it. Her assurance that the poverty and losses of the people were far in excess of the worst they had known during the war was too absurd even to secure his attention.
He had refused to know any of the people, ignoring the existence of Elsie's callers. But he had fallen in love with Marion from the moment he had seen her. The cold eye of the old fox-hunter kindled with the fire of his forgotten youth at the sight of this beautiful girl, seated on the glistening back of the mare she had saved from death.
As she rode through the village, every boy lifted his hat as to passing royalty, and no one, old or young, could allow her to pass without a cry of admiration. Her exquisite figure had developed into the full tropic splendour of Southern girlhood.
