When Fogarty had tilted the big plank against the side of the cabin and the boys had entered the kitchen in search of the mess of clams, the fisherman winked to his wife, jerked his head meaningly over one shoulder, and Mrs. Fogarty, in answer, followed him out to the woodshed.

"Them sneaks from Barnegat, Mulligan's and Farguson's boys, and the rest of 'em, been lettin' out on Archie: callin' him names, sayin' he ain't got no mother and he's one o' them pass-ins ye find on yer doorstep in a basket. I laughed it off and he 'peared to forgit it, but I thought he might ask ye, an' so I wanted to tip ye the wink."

"Well, ye needn't worry. I ain't goin' to tell him what I don't know," replied the wife, surprised that he should bring her all the way out to the woodshed to tell her a thing like that.

"But ye DO know, don't ye?"

"All I know is what Uncle Ephraim told me four or five years ago, and he's so flighty half the time and talks so much ye can't believe one-half he says—something about Miss Jane comin' across Archie's mother in a horsepital in Paris, or some'er's and promisin' her a-dyin' that she'd look after the boy, and she has. She'd do that here if there was women and babies up to Doctor John's horsepital 'stead o' men. It's jes' like her," and Mrs. Fogarty, not to lose her steps, stooped over a pile of wood and began gathering up an armful.

"Well, she ain't his mother, ye know," rejoined Fogarty, helping his wife with the sticks. "That's what they slammed in his face to-day, and he'll git it ag'in as he grows up. But he don't want to hear it from us."

"And he won't. Miss Jane ain't no fool. She knows more about him than anybody else, and when she gits ready to tell him she'll tell him. Don't make no difference who his mother was—the one he's got now is good enough for anybody. Tod would have been dead half a dozen times if it hadn't been for her and Doctor John, and there ain't nobody knows it better'n me. It's just like her to let Archie come here so much with Tod; she knows I ain't goin' to let nothin' happen to him. And as for mothers, Sam Fogarty," here Mrs. Fogarty lifted her free hand and shook her finger in a positive way—"when Archie gits short of mothers he's got one right here, don't make no difference what you or anybody else says," and she tapped her broad bosom meaningly.

Contrary, however, to Fogarty's hopes and surmises, Archie had forgotten neither Sandy's insult nor Scootsy's epithet. "He's a pick-up" and "he ain't got no mammy" kept ringing in his ears as he walked back up the beach to his home. He remembered having heard the words once before when he was some years younger, but then it had come from a passing neighbor and was not intended for him. This time it was flung square in his face. Every now and then as he followed the trend of the beach on his way home he would stop and look out over the sea, watching the long threads of smoke being unwound from the spools of the steamers and the sails of the fishing-boats as they caught the light of the setting sun. The epithet worried him. It was something to be ashamed of, he knew, or they would not have used it.

Jane, standing outside the gate-post, shading her eyes with her hand, scanning the village road, caught sight of his sturdy little figure the moment he turned the corner and ran to meet him.

"I got so worried—aren't you late, my son?" she asked, putting her arm about him and kissing him tenderly.

"Yes, it's awful late. I ran all the way from the church when I saw the clock. I didn't know it was past six. Oh, but we've had a bully day, mother! And we've had a fight. Tod and I were pirates, and Scootsy Mulligan tried to—"

Jane stopped the boy's joyous account with a cry of surprise. They were now walking back to Yardley's gate, hugging the stone wall.

"A fight! Oh, my son!"

"Yes, a bully fight; only there were seven of them and only two of us. That warn't fair, but Mr. Fogarty says they always fight like that. I could have licked 'em if they come on one at a time, but they got a plank and crawled up—"

"Crawled up where, my son?" asked Jane in astonishment. All this was an unknown world to her. She had seen the wreck and had known, of course, that the boys were making a playhouse of it, but this latter development was news to her.

"Why, on the pirate ship, where we've got our Bandit's Home. Tod is commodore and I'm first mate. Tod and I did all we could, but they didn't fight fair, and Scootsy called me a 'pick-up' and said I hadn't any mother. I asked Mr. Fogarty what he meant, but he wouldn't tell me. What's a 'pick-up,' dearie?" and he lifted his face to Jane's, his honest blue eyes searching her own.

Jane caught her hand to her side and leaned for a moment against the stone wall. This was the question which for years she had expected him to ask—one to which she had framed a hundred imaginary answers. When as a baby he first began to talk she had determined to tell him she was not his mother, and so get him gradually accustomed to the conditions of his birth. But every day she loved him the more, and every day she had put it off. To-day it was no easier. He was too young, she knew, to take in its full meaning, even if she could muster up the courage to tell him the half she was willing to tell him—that his mother was her friend and on her sick-bed had entrusted her child to her care. She had wanted to wait until he was old enough to understand, so that she should not lose his love when he came to know the truth. There had been, moreover, always this fear—would he love her for shielding his mother, or would he hate Lucy when he came to know? She had once talked it all over with Captain Holt, but she could never muster up the courage to take his advice.

"Tell him," he had urged. "It'll save you a lot o' trouble in the end. That'll let me out and I kin do for him as I want to. You've lived under this cloud long enough—there ain't nobody can live a lie a whole lifetime, Miss Jane. I'll take my share of the disgrace along of my dead boy, and you ain't done nothin', God knows, to be ashamed of. Tell him! It's grease to yer throat halyards and everything'll run smoother afterward. Take my advice, Miss Jane."

All these things rushed through her mind as she stood leaning against the stone wall, Archie's hand in hers, his big blue eyes still fixed on her own.

"Who said that to you, my son?" she asked in assumed indifference, in order to gain time in which to frame her answer and recover from the shock.

"Scootsy Mulligan."

"Is he a nice boy?"

"No, he's a coward, or he wouldn't fight as he does."

"Then I wouldn't mind him, my boy," and she smoothed back the hair from his forehead, her eyes avoiding the boy's steady gaze. It was only when someone opened the door of the closet concealing this spectre that Jane felt her knees give way and her heart turn sick within her. In all else she was fearless and strong.

"Was he the boy who said you had no mother?"

"Yes. I gave him an awful whack when he came up the first time, and he went heels over head."

"Well, you have got a mother, haven't you, darling?" she continued, with a sigh of relief, now that Archie was not insistent.

"You bet I have!" cried the boy, throwing his arms around her.

"Then we won't either of us bother about those bad boys and what they say," she answered, stooping over and kissing him.

And so for a time the remembrance of Scootsy's epithet faded out of the boy's mind.



CHAPTER XIV

HIGH WATER AT YARDLEY

Ten years have passed away.

The sturdy little fellow in knee-trousers is a lad of seventeen, big and strong for his age; Tod is three years older, and the two are still inseparable. The brave commander of the pirate ship is now a full-fledged fisherman and his father's main dependence. Archie is again his chief henchman, and the two spend many a morning in Tod's boat when the blue-fish are running. Old Fogarty does not mind it; he rather likes it, and Mother Fogarty is always happier when the two are together.

"If one of 'em gits overboard," she said one day to her husband, "t'other kin save him."

"Save him! Well, I guess!" he replied. "Salt water skims off Archie same's if he was a white bellied gull; can't drown him no more'n you kin a can buoy."

The boy has never forgotten Scootsy's epithet, although he has never spoken of it to his mother—no one knows her now by any other name. She thought the episode had passed out of his mind, but she did not know everything that lay in the boy's heart. He and Tod had discussed it time and again, and had wondered over his own name and that of his nameless father, as boys wonder, but they had come to no conclusion. No one in the village could tell them, for no one ever knew. He had asked the doctor, but had only received a curious answer.

"What difference does it make, son, when you have such a mother? You have brought her only honor, and the world loves her the better because of you. Let it rest until she tells you; it will only hurt her heart if you ask her now."

The doctor had already planned out the boy's future; he was to be sent to Philadelphia to study medicine when his schooling was over, and was then to come into his office and later on succeed to his practice.

Captain Holt would have none of it.

"He don't want to saw off no legs," the bluff old man had blurted out when he heard of it. "He wants to git ready to take a ship 'round Cape Horn. If I had my way I'd send him some'er's where he could learn navigation, and that's in the fo'c's'le of a merchantman. Give him a year or two before the mast. I made that mistake with Bart—he loafed round here too long and when he did git a chance he was too old."

Report had it that the captain was going to leave the lad his money, and had therefore a right to speak; but no one knew. He was closer-mouthed than ever, though not so gruff and ugly as he used to be; Archie had softened him, they said, taking the place of that boy of his he "druv out to die a good many years ago."

Jane's mind wavered. Neither profession suited her. She would sacrifice anything she had for the boy provided they left him with her. Philadelphia was miles away, and she would see him but seldom. The sea she shrank from and dreaded. She had crossed it twice, and both times with an aching heart. She feared, too, its treachery and cruelty. The waves that curled and died on Barnegat beach—messengers from across the sea—brought only tidings fraught with suffering.

Archie had no preferences—none yet. His future was too far off to trouble him much. Nor did anything else worry him.

One warm September day Archie turned into Yardley gate, his so'wester still on his head framing his handsome, rosy face; his loose jacket open at the throat, the tarpaulins over his arm. He had been outside the inlet with Tod—since daybreak, in fact—fishing for bass and weakfish.

Jane had been waiting for him for hours. She held an open letter in her hand, and her face was happier, Archie thought as he approached her, than he had seen it for months.

There are times in all lives when suddenly and without warning, those who have been growing quietly by our side impress their new development upon us. We look at them in full assurance that the timid glance of the child will be returned, and are astounded to find instead the calm gaze of the man; or we stretch out our hand to help the faltering step and touch a muscle that could lead a host. Such changes are like the breaking of the dawn; so gradual has been their coming that the full sun of maturity is up and away flooding the world with beauty and light before we can recall the degrees by which it rose.

Jane realized this—and for the first time—as she looked at Archie swinging through the gate, waving his hat as he strode toward her. She saw that the sailor had begun to assert itself. He walked with an easy swing, his broad shoulders—almost as broad as the captain's and twice as hard—thrown back, his head up, his blue eyes and white teeth laughing out of a face brown and ruddy with the sun and wind, his throat and neck bare except for the silk handkerchief—one of Tod's—wound loosely about it; a man really, strong and tough, with hard sinews and capable thighs, back, and wrists—the kind of sailorman that could wear tarpaulins or broadcloth at his pleasure and never lose place in either station.

In this rude awakening Jane's heart-strings tightened. She became suddenly conscious that the Cobden look had faded out of him; Lucy's eyes and hair were his, and so was her rounded chin, with its dimple, but there was nothing else about him that recalled either her own father or any other Cobden she remembered. As he came near enough for her to look into his eyes she began to wonder how he would impress Lucy, what side of his nature would she love best—his courage and strength or his tenderness?

The sound of his voice shouting her name recalled her to herself, and a thrill of pride illumined her happy face like a burst of sunlight as he tossed his tarpaulins on the grass and put his strong arms about her.

"Mother, dear! forty black bass, eleven weakfish, and half a barrel of small fry—what do you think of that?"

"Splendid, Archie. Tod must be proud as a peacock. But look at this!" and she held up the letter. "Who do you think it's from? Guess now," and she locked one arm through his, and the two strolled back to the house.

"Guess now!" she repeated, holding the letter behind her back. The two were often like lovers together.

"Let me see," he coaxed. "What kind of a stamp has it got?"

"Never you mind about the stamp."

"Uncle John—and it's about my going to Philadelphia."

Jane laughed. "Uncle John never saw it."

"Then it's from—Oh, you tell me, mother!"

"No—guess. Think of everybody you ever heard of. Those you have seen and those you—"

"Oh, I know—Aunt Lucy."

"Yes, and she's coming home. Home, Archie, think of it, after all these years!"

"Well, that's bully! She won't know me, will she? I never saw her, did I?"

"Yes, when you were a little fellow." It was difficult to keep the tremor out of her voice.

"Will she bring any dukes and high daddies with her?"

"No," laughed Jane, "only her little daughter Ellen, the sweetest little girl you ever saw, she writes."

"How old is she?"

He had slipped his arm around his mother's waist now and the two were "toeing it" up the path, he stopping every few feet to root a pebble from its bed. The coming of the aunt was not a great event in his life.

"Just seven her last birthday."

"All right, she's big enough. We'll take her out and teach her to fish. Hello, granny!" and the boy loosened his arm as he darted up the steps toward Martha. "Got the finest mess of fish coming up here in a little while you ever laid your eyes on," he shouted, catching the old nurse's cap from her head and clapping it upon his own, roaring with laughter, as he fled in the direction of the kitchen.

Jane joined in the merriment and, moving a chair from the hall, took her seat on the porch to await the boy's return. She was too happy to busy herself about the house or to think of any of her outside duties. Doctor John would not be in until the afternoon, and so she would occupy herself in thinking out plans to make her sister's home-coming a joyous one.

As she looked down over the garden as far as the two big gate-posts standing like grim sentinels beneath the wide branches of the hemlocks, and saw how few changes had taken place in the old home since her girl sister had left it, her heart thrilled with joy. Nothing really was different; the same mass of tangled rose-vines climbed over the porch—now quite to the top of the big roof, but still the same dear old vines that Lucy had loved in her childhood; the same honeysuckle hid the posts; the same box bordered the paths. The house was just as she left it; her bedroom had really never been touched. What few changes had taken place she would not miss. Meg would not run out to meet her, and Rex was under a stone that the doctor had placed over his grave; nor would Ann Gossaway peer out of her eyrie of a window and follow her with her eyes as she drove by; her tongue was quiet at last, and she and her old mother lay side by side in the graveyard. Doctor John had exhausted his skill upon them both, and Martha, who had forgiven her enemy, had sat by her bedside until the end, but nothing had availed. Mrs. Cavendish was dead, of course, but she did not think Lucy would care very much. She and Doctor John had nursed her for months until the end came, and had then laid her away near the apple-trees she was so fond of. But most of the faithful hearts who had loved her were still beating, and all were ready with a hearty welcome.

Archie was the one thing new—new to Lucy. And yet she had no fear either for him or for Lucy. When she saw him she would love him, and when she had known him a week she would never be separated from him again. The long absence could not have wiped out all remembrance of the boy, nor would the new child crowd him from her heart.

When Doctor John sprang from his gig (the custom of his daily visits had never been broken) she could hardly wait until he tied his horse—poor Bess had long since given out—to tell him the joyful news.

He listened gravely, his face lighting up at her happiness. He was glad for Jane and said so frankly, but the situation did not please him. He at heart really dreaded the effect of Lucy's companionship on the woman he loved. Although it had been years since he had seen her, he had followed her career, especially since her marriage, with the greatest interest and with the closest attention. He had never forgotten, nor had he forgiven her long silence of two years after her marriage, during which time she had never written Jane a line, nor had he ever ceased to remember Jane's unhappiness over it. Jane had explained it all to him on the ground that Lucy was offended because she had opposed the marriage, but the doctor knew differently. Nor had he ceased to remember the other letters which followed, and how true a story they told of Lucy's daily life and ambitions. He could almost recall the wording of one of them. "My husband is too ill," it had said, "to go south with me, and so I will run down to Rome for a month or so, for I really need the change." And a later one, written since his death, in which she wrote of her winter in Paris and at Monte Carlo, and "how good my mother-in-law is to take care of Ellen." This last letter to her sister, just received—the one he then held in his hand, and which gave Jane such joy, and which he was then reading as carefully as if it had been a prescription—was to his analytical mind like all the rest of its predecessors. One sentence sent a slight curl to his lips. "I cannot stay away any longer from my precious sister," it said, "and am coming back to the home I adore. I have no one to love me, now that my dear husband is dead, but you and my darling Ellen."

The news of Lucy's expected return spread rapidly. Old Martha in her joy was the mouthpiece. She gave the details out at church the Sunday morning following the arrival of Lucy's letter. She was almost too ill to venture out, but she made the effort, stopping the worshippers as they came down the board walk; telling each one of the good news, the tears streaming down her face. To the children and the younger generation the announcement made but little difference; some of them had never heard that Miss Jane had a sister, and others only that she lived abroad. Their mothers knew, of course, and so did the older men, and all were pleased over the news. Those of them who remembered the happy, joyous girl with her merry eyes and ringing laugh were ready to give her a hearty welcome; they felt complimented that the distinguished lady—fifteen years' residence abroad and a rich husband had gained her this position—should be willing to exchange the great Paris for the simple life of Warehold. It touched their civic pride.

Great preparations were accordingly made. Billy Tatham's successor (his son)—in his best open carriage—was drawn up at the station, and Lucy's drive through the village with some of her numerous boxes covered with foreign labels piled on the seat beside the young man—who insisted on driving Lucy and the child himself—was more like the arrival of a princess revisiting her estates than anything else. Martha and Archie and Jane filled the carriage, with little Ellen on Archie's lap, and more than one neighbor ran out of the house and waved to them as they drove through the long village street and turned into the gate.

Archie threw his arms around Lucy when he saw her, and in his open, impetuous way called her his "dear aunty," telling her how glad he was that she had come to keep his good mother from getting so sad at times, and adding that she and granny had not slept for days before she came, so eager were they to see her. And Lucy kissed him in return, but with a different throb at her heart. She felt a thrill when she saw how handsome and strong he was, and for an instant there flashed through her a feeling of pride that he was her own flesh and blood. Then there had come a sudden revulsion, strangling every emotion but the one of aversion—an aversion so overpowering that she turned suddenly and catching Ellen in her arms kissed her with so lavish a display of affection that those at the station who witnessed the episode had only praise for the mother's devotion. Jane saw the kiss Lucy had given Archie, and a cry of joy welled up in her heart, but she lost the shadow that followed. My lady of Paris was too tactful for that.

Her old room was all ready. Jane, with Martha helping, had spent days in its preparation. White dimity curtains starched stiff as a petticoat had been hung at the windows; a new lace cover spread on the little mahogany, brass-mounted dressing-table—her great grandmother's, in fact—with its tiny swinging mirror and the two drawers (Martha remembered when her bairn was just high enough to look into the mirror), and pots of fresh flowers placed on the long table on which her hooks used to rest. Two easy-chairs had also been brought up from the sitting-room below, covered with new chintz and tied with blue ribbons, and, more wonderful still, a candle-box had been covered with cretonne and studded with brass tacks by the aid of Martha's stiff fingers that her bairn might have a place in which to put her dainty shoes and slippers.

When the trunks had been carried upstairs and Martha with her own hands had opened my lady's gorgeous blue morocco dressing-case with its bottles capped with gold and its brushes and fittings emblazoned with cupids swinging in garlands of roses, the poor woman's astonishment knew no bounds. The many scents and perfumes, the dainty boxes, big and little, holding various powders—one a red paste which the old nurse thought must be a salve, but about which, it is needless to say, she was greatly mistaken—as well as a rabbit's foot smirched with rouge (this she determined to wash at once), and a tiny box of court-plaster cut in half moons. So many things, in fact, did the dear old nurse pull from this wonderful bag that the modest little bureau could not hold half of them, and the big table had to be brought up and swept of its plants and belongings.

The various cosmetics and their uses were especial objects of comment.

"Did ye break one of the bottles, darlin'?" she asked, sniffing at a peculiar perfume which seemed to permeate everything. "Some of 'em must have smashed; it's awful strong everywhere—smell that"—and she held out a bit of lace which she had taken from the case, a dressing-sacque that Lucy had used on the steamer.

Lucy laughed. "And you don't like it? How funny, you dear old thing! That was made specially for me; no one else in Paris has a drop."

And then the dresses! Particularly the one she was to wear the first night—a dress flounced and furbelowed and of a creamy white (she still wore mourning—delicate purples shading to white—the exact tone for a husband six months dead). And the filmy dressing-gowns, and, more wonderful than all, the puff of smoke she was to sleep in, held together by a band of violet ribbon; to say nothing of the dainty slippers bound about with swan's-down, and the marvellous hats, endless silk stockings of mauve, white, and black, and long and short gloves. In all her life Martha had never seen or heard of such things. The room was filled with them and the two big closets crammed to overflowing, and yet a dozen trunks were not yet unpacked, including the two small boxes holding little Ellen's clothes.

The night was one long to be remembered. Everyone said the Manor House had not been so gay for years. And they were all there—all her old friends and many of Jane's new ones, who for years had looked on Lucy as one too far above them in station to be spoken of except with bated breath.

The intimates of the house came early. Doctor John first, with his grave manner and low voice—so perfectly dressed and quiet: Lucy thought she had never seen his equal in bearing and demeanor, nor one so distinguished-looking—not in any circle in Europe; and Uncle Ephraim, grown fat and gouty, leaning on a cane, but still hearty and wholesome, and overjoyed to see her; and Pastor Dellenbaugh—his hair was snow-white now—and his complacent and unruffled wife; and the others, including Captain Holt, who came in late. It was almost a repetition of that other home-coming years before, when they had gathered to greet her, then a happy, joyous girl just out of school.

Lucy in their honor wore the dress that had so astonished Martha, and a diamond-studded ornament which she took from her jewel-case and fastened in her hair. The dress followed the wonderful curves of her beautiful body in all its dimpled plumpness and the jewel set off to perfection the fresh, oval face, laughing blue eyes—wet forget-me-nots were the nearest their color—piquant, upturned nose and saucy mouth. The color of the gown, too, harmonized both with the delicate pink of her cheeks and with the tones of her rather too full throat showing above the string of pearls that clasped it.

Jane wore a simple gray silk gown which followed closely the slender and almost attenuated lines of her figure. This gown the doctor always loved because, as he told her, it expressed so perfectly the simplicity of her mind and life. Her only jewels were her deep, thoughtful eyes, and these, to-night, were brilliant with joy over her sister's return.

As Jane moved about welcoming her guests the doctor, whose eyes rarely left her face, became conscious that at no time in their lives had the contrast between the two sisters been greater.

One, a butterfly of thirty-eight, living only in the glow of the sunlight, radiant in plumage, alighting first on one flower and then on another, but always on flowers, never on weeds; gathering such honey as suited her taste; never resting where she might by any chance be compelled to use her feet, but always poised in air; a woman, rich, brilliant, and beautiful, and—here was the key-note of her life—always, year in and year out, warmed by somebody's admiration, whose she didn't much mind nor care, so that it gratified her pride and relieved her of ennui. The other—and this one he loved with his whole soul—a woman of forty-six, with a profound belief in her creeds; quixotic sometimes in her standards, but always sincere; devoted to her traditions, to her friends and to her duty; unselfish, tender-hearted, and self-sacrificing; whose feet, though often tired and bleeding, had always trodden the earth.

As Lucy greeted first one neighbor and then another, sometimes with one hand, sometimes with two, offering her cheek now and then to some old friend who had known her as a child, Jane's heart swelled with something of the pride she used to have when Lucy was a girl. Her beautiful sister, she saw, had lost none of the graciousness of her old manner, nor of her tact in making her guests feel perfectly at home. Jane noticed, too—and this was new to her—a certain well-bred condescension, so delicately managed as never to be offensive—more the air of a woman accustomed to many sorts and conditions of men and women, and who chose to be agreeable as much to please herself as to please her guests.

And yet with all this poise of manner and condescending graciousness, there would now and then dart from Lucy's eyes a quick, searching glance of inquiry, as she tried to read her guests' thoughts, followed by a relieved look on her own face as she satisfied herself that no whisper of her past had ever reached them. These glances Jane never caught.

Doctor John was most cordial in his greeting and talked to her a long time about some portions of Europe, particularly a certain cafe in Dresden where he used to dine, and another in Paris frequented by the beau monde. She answered him quite frankly, telling him of some of her own experiences in both places, quite forgetting that she was giving him glimpses of her own life while away—glimpses which she had kept carefully concealed from Jane or Martha. She was conscious, however, after he had left her of a certain uncomfortable feeling quivering through her as his clear, steadfast eyes looked into hers, he listened, and yet she thought she detected his brain working behind his steadfast gaze. It was as if he was searching for some hidden disease. "He knows something," she said to herself, when the doctor moved to let someone else take his place. "How much I can't tell. I'll get it all out of sister."

Blunt and bluff Captain Holt, white-whiskered and white-haired now, but strong and hearty, gave her another and a different shock. What his first words would be when they met and how she would avoid discussing the subject uppermost in their minds if, in his rough way, he insisted on talking about it, was one of the things that had worried her greatly when she decided to come home, for there was never any doubt in her mind as to his knowledge. But she misjudged the captain, as had a great many others who never looked beneath the rugged bark covering his heart of oak.

"I'm glad you've come at last," he said gravely, hardly touching her hand in welcome, "you ought to have been here before. Jane's got a fine lad of her own that she's bringin' up; when you know him ye'll like him."

She did not look at him when she answered, but a certain feeling of relief crept over her. She saw that the captain had buried the past and intended never to revive it.

The stern look on his face only gave way when little Ellen came to him of her own accord and climbing up into his lap said in her broken English that she heard he was a great captain and that she wanted him to tell her some stories like her good papa used to tell her. "He was gray like you," she said, "and big," and she measured the size with her plump little arms that showed out of her dainty French dress.

With Doctor John and Captain Holt out of the way Lucy's mind was at rest. "Nobody else round about Yardley except these two knows," she kept saying to herself with a bound of relief, "and for these I don't care. The doctor is Jane's slave, and the captain is evidently wise enough not to uncover skeletons locked up in his own closet."

These things settled in her mind, my lady gave herself up to whatever enjoyment, compatible with her rapidly fading mourning, the simple surroundings afforded, taking her cue from the conditions that confronted her and ordering her conduct accordingly and along these lines: Archie was her adopted nephew, the son of an old friend of Jane's, and one whom she would love dearly, as, in fact, she would anybody else whom Jane had brought up; she herself was a gracious widow of large means recovering from a great sorrow; one who had given up the delights of foreign courts to spend some time among her dear people who had loved her as a child. Here for a time would she bring up and educate her daughter.

"To be once more at home, and in dear old Warehold, too!" she had said with upraised Madonna-like eyes and clasped hands to a group of women who were hanging on every word that dropped from her pretty lips. "Do you know what that is to me? There is hardly a day I have not longed for it. Pray, forgive me if I do not come to see you as often as I would, but I really hate to be an hour outside of the four walls of my precious home."



CHAPTER XV

A PACKAGE OF LETTERS

Under the influence of the new arrival it was not at all strange that many changes were wrought in the domestic life at Cobden Manor.

My lady was a sensuous creature, loving color and flowers and the dainty appointments of life as much in the surroundings of her home as in the adornment of her person, and it was not many weeks before the old-fashioned sitting-room had been transformed into a French boudoir. In this metamorphosis she had used but few pieces of new furniture—one or two, perhaps, that she had picked up in the village, as well as some bits of mahogany and brass that she loved—but had depended almost entirely upon the rearrangement of the heirlooms of the family. With the boudoir idea in view, she had pulled the old tables out from the walls, drawn the big sofa up to the fire, spread a rug—one of her own—before the mantel, hung new curtains at the windows and ruffled their edges with lace, banked the sills with geraniums and begonias, tilted a print or two beside the clock, scattered a few books and magazines over the centre-table, on which she had placed a big, generous lamp, under whose umbrella shade she could see to read as she sat in her grandmother's rocking-chair—in fact, had, with that taste inherent in some women—touched with a knowing hand the dead things about her and made them live and mean something;—her talisman being an unerring sense of what contributed to personal comfort. Heretofore Doctor John had been compelled to drag a chair halfway across the room in order to sit and chat with Jane, or had been obliged to share her seat on the sofa, too far from the hearth on cold days to be comfortable. Now he could either stand on the hearth-rug and talk to her, seated in one corner of the pulled-up sofa, her work-basket on a small table beside her, or he could drop into a big chair within reach of her hand and still feel the glow of the fire. Jane smiled at the changes and gave Lucy free rein to do as she pleased. Her own nature had never required these nicer luxuries; she had been too busy, and in these last years of her life too anxious, to think of them, and so the room had been left as in the days of her father.

The effect of the rearrangement was not lost on the neighbors. They at once noticed the sense of cosiness everywhere apparent, and in consequence called twice as often, and it was not long before the old-fashioned sitting-room became a stopping-place for everybody who had half an hour to spare.

These attractions, with the aid of a generous hospitality, Lucy did her best to maintain, partly because she loved excitement and partly because she intended to win the good-will of her neighbors—those who might be useful to her. The women succumbed at once. Not only were her manners most gracious, but her jewels of various kinds, her gowns of lace and frou-frou, her marvellous hats, her assortment of parasols, her little personal belongings and niceties—gold scissors, thimbles, even the violet ribbons that rippled through her transparent underlaces—so different from those of any other woman they knew—were a constant source of wonder and delight. To them she was a beautiful Lady Bountiful who had fluttered down among them from heights above, and whose departure, should it ever take place, would leave a gloom behind that nothing could illumine.

To the men she was more reserved. Few of them ever got beyond a handshake and a smile, and none of them ever reached the borders of intimacy. Popularity in a country village could never, she knew, be gained by a pretty woman without great discretion. She explained her foresight to Jane by telling her that there was no man of her world in Warehold but the doctor, and that she wouldn't think of setting her cap for him as she would be gray-haired before he would have the courage to propose. Then she kissed Jane in apology, and breaking out into a rippling laugh that Martha heard upstairs, danced out of the room.

Little Ellen, too, had her innings; not only was she prettily dressed, presenting the most joyous of pictures, as with golden curls flying about her shoulders she flitted in and out of the rooms like a sprite, but she was withal so polite in her greetings, dropping to everyone a little French courtesy when she spoke, and all in her quaint, broken dialect, that everybody fell in love with her at sight. None of the other mothers had such a child, and few of them knew that such children existed.

Jane watched the workings of Lucy's mind with many misgivings. She loved her lightheartedness and the frank, open way with which she greeted everybody who crossed their threshold. She loved, too, to see her beautifully gowned and equipped and to hear the flattering comments of the neighbors on her appearance and many charms; but every now and then her ear caught an insincere note that sent a shiver through her. She saw that the welcome Lucy gave them was not from her heart, but from her lips; due to her training, no doubt, or perhaps to her unhappiness, for Jane still mourned over the unhappy years of Lucy's life—an unhappiness, had she known it, which had really ended with Archie's safe adoption and Bart's death. Another cause of anxiety was Lucy's restlessness. Every day she must have some new excitement—a picnic with the young girls and young men, private theatricals in the town hall, or excursions to Barnegat Beach, where they were building a new summer hotel. Now and then she would pack her bag and slip off to New York or Philadelphia for days at a time to stay with friends she had met abroad, leaving Ellen with Jane and Martha. To the older sister she seemed like some wild, untamable bird of brilliant plumage used to long, soaring flights, perching first on one dizzy height and then another, from which she could watch the world below.

The thing, however, which distressed Jane most was Lucy's attitude towards Archie. She made every allowance for her first meeting at the station, and knew that necessarily it must be more or less constrained, but she had not expected the almost cold indifference with which she had treated the boy ever since.

As the days went by and Lucy made no effort to attach Archie to her or to interest herself either in his happiness or welfare, Jane became more and more disturbed. She had prayed for this home-coming and had set her heart on the home-building which was sure to follow, and now it seemed farther off than ever. One thing troubled and puzzled her: while Lucy was always kind to Archie indoors, kissing him with the others when she came down to breakfast, she never, if she could help it, allowed him to walk with her in the village, and she never on any occasion took him with her when visiting the neighbors.

"Why not take Archie with you, dear?" Jane had said one morning to Lucy, who had just announced her intention of spending a few days in Philadelphia with Max Feilding's sister Sue, whom she had met abroad when Max was studying in Dresden—Max was still a bachelor, and his sister kept house for him. He was abroad at the time, but was expected by every steamer.

"Archie isn't invited, you old goosie, and he would be as much out of place in Max's house as Uncle Ephraim Tipple would be in Parliament."

"But they would be glad to see him if you took him. He is just the age now when a boy gets impressions which last him through—"

"Yes, the gawky and stumble-over-things age! Piano-stools, rugs, anything that comes in his way. And the impressions wouldn't do him a bit of good. They might, in fact, do him harm," and she laughed merrily and spread her fingers to the blaze. A laugh was often her best shield. She had in her time dealt many a blow and then dodged behind a laugh to prevent her opponent from striking back.

"But, Lucy, don't you want to do something to help him?" Jane asked in a pleading tone.

"Yes, whatever I can, but he seems to me to be doing very well as he is. Doctor John is devoted to him and the captain idolizes him. He's a dear, sweet boy, of course, and does you credit, but he's not of my world, Jane, dear, and I'd have to make him all over again before he could fit into my atmosphere. Besides, he told me this morning that he was going off for a week with some fisherman on the beach—some person by the name of Fogarty, I think."

"Yes, a fine fellow; they have been friends from their boyhood." She was not thinking of Fogarty, but of the tone of Lucy's voice when speaking of her son.

"Yes—most estimable gentleman, no doubt, this Mr. Fogarty, but then, dear, we don't invite that sort of people to dinner, do we?" and another laugh rippled out.

"Yes, sometimes," answered Jane in all sincerity. "Not Fogarty, because he would be uncomfortable if he came, but many of the others just as humble. We really have very few of any other kind. I like them all. Many of them love me dearly."

"Not at all strange; nobody can help loving you," and she patted Jane's shoulder with her jewelled fingers.

"But you like them, too, don't you? You treat them as if you did."

Lucy lifted her fluted petticoat, rested her slippered foot on the fender, glanced down at the embroidered silk stocking covering her ankle, and said in a graver tone:

"I like all kinds of people—in their proper place. This is my home, and it is wise to get along with one's neighbors. Besides, they all have tongues in their heads like the rest of the human race, and it is just as well to have them wag for you as against you."

Jane paused for a moment, her eyes watching the blazing logs, and asked with almost a sigh:

"You don't mean, dear, that you never intend to help Archie, do you?"

"Never is a long word, Jane. Wait till he grows up and I see what he makes of himself. He is now nothing but a great animal, well built as a young bull, and about as awkward."

Jane's eyes flashed and her shoulders straightened. The knife had a double edge to its blade.

"He is your own flesh and blood, Lucy," she said with a ring of indignation in her voice. "You don't treat Ellen so; why should you Archie?"

Lucy took her foot from the fender, dropped her skirts, and looked at Jane curiously. From underneath the half-closed lids of her eyes there flashed a quick glance of hate—a look that always came into Lucy's eyes whenever Jane connected her name with Archie's.

"Let us understand each other, sister," she said icily. "I don't dislike the boy. When he gets into trouble I'll help him in any way I can, but please remember he's not my boy—he's yours. You took him from me with that understanding and I have never asked him back. He can't love two mothers. You say he has been your comfort all these years. Why, then, do you want to unsettle his mind?"

Jane lifted her head and looked at Lucy with searching eyes—looked as a man looks when someone he must not strike has flung a glove in his face.

"Do you really love anything, Lucy?" she asked in a lower voice, her eyes still fastened on her sister's.

"Yes, Ellen and you."

"Did you love her father?" she continued in the same direct tone.

"Y-e-s, a little— He was the dearest old man in the world and did his best to please me; and then he was never very well. But why talk about him, dear?"

"And you never gave him anything in return for all his devotion?" Jane continued in the same cross-examining voice and with the same incisive tone.

"Yes, my companionship—whenever I could. About what you give Doctor John," and she looked at Jane with a sly inquiry as she laughed gently to herself.

Jane bit her lips and her face flushed scarlet. The cowardly thrust had not wounded her own heart. It had only uncovered the love of the man who lay enshrined in its depths. A sudden sense of the injustice done him arose in her mind and then her own helplessness in it all.

"I would give him everything I have, if I could," she answered simply, all her insistency gone, the tears starting to her eyes.

Lucy threw her arms about her sister and held her cheek to her own.

"Dear, I was only in fun; please forgive me. Everything is so solemn to you. Now kiss me and tell me you love me."

That night when Captain Holt came in to play with the little "Pond Lily," as he called Ellen, Jane told him of her conversation with Lucy, not as a reflection on her sister, but because she thought he ought to know how she felt toward Archie. The kiss had wiped out the tears, but the repudiation of Archie still rankled in her breast.

The captain listened patiently to the end. Then he said with a pause between each word:

"She's sailin' without her port and starboard lights, Miss Jane. One o' these nights with the tide settin' she'll run up ag'in somethin' solid in a fog, and then—God help her! If Bart had lived he might have come home and done the decent thing, and then we could git her into port some'er's for repairs, but that's over now. She better keep her lights trimmed. Tell her so for me."

What this "decent thing" was he never said—perhaps he had but a vague idea himself. Bart had injured Lucy and should have made reparation, but in what way except by marriage—he, perhaps, never formulated in his own mind.

Jane winced under the captain's outburst, but she held her peace. She knew how outspoken he was and how unsparing of those who differed from him and she laid part of his denunciation to this cause.

Some weeks after this conversation the captain started for Yardley to see Jane on a matter of business, and incidentally to have a romp with the Pond Lily. It was astonishing how devoted the old sea-dog was to the child, and how she loved him in return. "My big bear," she used to call him, tugging away at his gray whiskers. On his way he stopped at the post-office for his mail. It was mid-winter and the roads were partly blocked with snow, making walking difficult except for sturdy souls like Captain Nat.

"Here, Cap'n Holt, yer jest the man I been a-waitin' for," cried Miss Tucher, the postmistress, from behind the sliding window. "If you ain't goin' up to the Cobdens, ye kin, can't ye? Here's a lot o' letters jest come that I know they're expectin'. Miss Lucy's" (many of the village people still called her Miss Lucy, not being able to pronounce her dead husband's name) "come in yesterday and seems as if she couldn't wait. This storm made everything late and the mail got in after she left. There ain't nobody comin' out to-day and here's a pile of 'em—furrin' most of 'em. I'd take 'em myself if the snow warn't so deep. Don't mind, do ye? I'd hate to have her disapp'inted, for she's jes' 's sweet as they make 'em."

"Don't mind it a mite, Susan Tucher," cried the captain. "Goin' there, anyhow. Got some business with Miss Jane. Lord, what a wad o' them!"

"That ain't half what she gits sometimes," replied the postmistress, "and most of 'em has seals and crests stamped on 'em. Some o' them furrin lords, I guess, she met over there."

These letters the captain held in his hand when he pushed open the door of the sitting-room and stood before the inmates in his rough pea-jacket, his ruddy face crimson with the cold, his half-moon whiskers all the whiter by contrast.

"Good-mornin' to the hull o' ye!" he shouted. "Cold as blue blazes outside, I tell ye, but ye look snug enough in here. Hello, little Pond Lily! why ain't you out on your sled? Put two more roses in your cheeks if there was room for 'em. There, ma'am," and he nodded to Lucy and handed her the letters, "that's 'bout all the mail that come this mornin'. There warn't nothin' else much in the bag. Susan Tucher asked me to bring 'em up to you count of the weather and 'count o' your being in such an all-fired hurry to read 'em."

Little Ellen was in his arms before this speech was finished and everybody else on their feet shaking hands with the old salt, except poor, deaf old Martha, who called out, "Good-mornin', Captain Holt," in a strong, clear voice, and in rather a positive way, but who kept her seat by the fire and continued her knitting; and complacent Mrs. Dellenbaugh, the pastor's wife, who, by reason of her position, never got up for anybody.

The captain advanced to the fire, Ellen still in his arms, shook hands with Mrs. Dellenbaugh and extended three fingers, rough as lobster's claws and as red, to the old nurse. Of late years he never met Martha without feeling that he owed her an apology for the way he had treated her the day she begged him to send Bart away. So he always tried to make it up to her, although he had never told her why.

"Hope you're better, Martha? Heard ye was under the weather; was that so? Ye look spry 'nough now," he shouted in his best quarter-deck voice.

"Yes, but it warn't much. Doctor John fixed me up," Martha replied coldly. She had no positive animosity toward the captain—not since he had shown some interest in Archie—but she could never make a friend of him.

During this greeting Lucy, who had regained her chair, sat with the letters unopened in her lap. None of the eagerness Miss Tucher had indicated was apparent. She seemed more intent on arranging the folds of her morning-gown accentuating the graceful outlines of her well-rounded figure. She had glanced through the package hastily, and had found the one she wanted and knew that it was there warm under her touch—the others did not interest her.

"What a big mail, dear," remarked Jane, drawing up a chair. "Aren't you going to open it?" The captain had found a seat by the window and the child was telling him everything she had done since she last saw him.

"Oh, yes, in a minute," replied Lucy. "There's plenty of time." With this she picked up the bunch of letters, ran her eye through the collection, and then, with the greatest deliberation, broke one seal after another, tossing the contents on the table. Some she merely glanced at, searching for the signatures and ignoring the contents; others she read through to the end. One was from Dresden, from a student she had known there the year before. This was sealed with a wafer and bore the address of the cafe where he took his meals. Another was stamped with a crest and emitted a slight perfume; a third was enlivened by a monogram in gold and began: "Ma chere amie," in a bold round hand. The one under her hand she did not open, but slipped into the pocket of her dress. The others she tore into bits and threw upon the blazing logs.

"I guess if them fellers knew how short a time it would take ye to heave their cargo overboard," blurted out the captain, "they'd thought a spell 'fore they mailed their manifests."

Lucy laughed good-naturedly and Jane watched the blaze roar up the wide chimney. The captain settled back in his chair and was about to continue his "sea yarn," as he called it, to little Ellen, when he suddenly loosened the child from his arms, and leaning forward in his seat toward where Jane sat, broke out with:

"God bless me! I believe I'm wool-gathering. I clean forgot what I come for. It is you, Miss Jane, I come to see, not this little curly head that'll git me ashore yet with her cunnin' ways. They're goin' to build a new life-saving station down Barnegat way. That Dutch brig that come ashore last fall in that so'easter and all them men drownded could have been saved if we'd had somethin' to help 'em with. We did all we could, but that house of Refuge ain't half rigged and most o' the time ye got to break the door open to git at what there is if ye're in a hurry, which you allus is. They ought to have a station with everything 'bout as it ought to be and a crew on hand all the time; then, when somethin' comes ashore you're right there on top of it. That one down to Squam is just what's wanted here."

"Will it be near the new summer hotel?" asked Lucy carelessly, just as a matter of information, and without raising her eyes from the rings on her beautiful hands.

"'Bout half a mile from the front porch, ma'am"—he preferred calling her so—"from what I hear. 'Tain't located exactly yet, but some'er's along there. I was down with the Gov'ment agent yesterday."

"Who will take charge of it, captain?" inquired Jane, reaching over her basket in search of her scissors.

"Well, that's what I come up for. They're talkin' about me," and the captain put his hands behind Ellen's head and cracked his big knuckles close to her ear, the child laughing with delight as she listened.

The announcement was received with some surprise. Jane, seeing Martha's inquiring face, as if she wanted to hear, repeated the captain's words to her in a loud voice. Martha laid down her knitting and looked at the captain over her spectacles.

"Why, would you take it, captain?" Jane asked in some astonishment, turning to him again.

"Don't know but I would. Ain't no better job for a man than savin' lives. I've helped kill a good many; 'bout time now I come 'bout on another tack. I'm doin' nothin'—haven't been for years. If I could get the right kind of a crew 'round me—men I could depend on—I think I could make it go."

"If you couldn't nobody could, captain," said Jane in a positive way. "Have you picked out your crew?"

"Yes, three or four of 'em. Isaac Polhemus and Tom Morgan—Tom sailed with me on my last voyage—and maybe Tod."

"Archie's Tod?" asked Jane, replacing her scissors and searching for a spool of cotton.

"Archie's Tod," repeated the captain, nodding his head, his big hand stroking Ellen's flossy curls. "That's what brought me up. I want Tod, and he won't go without Archie. Will ye give him to me?"

"My Archie!" cried Jane, dropping her work and staring straight at the captain.

"Your Archie, Miss Jane, if that's the way you put it," and he stole a look at Lucy. She was conscious of his glance, but she did not return it; she merely continued listening as she twirled one of the rings on her finger.

"Well, but, captain, isn't it very dangerous work? Aren't the men often drowned?" protested Jane.

"Anything's dangerous 'bout salt water that's worth the doin'. I've stuck to the pumps seventy-two hours at a time, but I'm here to tell the tale."

"Have you talked to Archie?"

"No, but Tod has. They've fixed it up betwixt 'em. The boy's dead set to go."

"Well, but isn't he too young?"

"Young or old, he's tough as a marline-spike—A1, and copper fastened throughout. There ain't a better boatman on the beach. Been that way ever since he was a boy. Won't do him a bit of harm to lead that kind of life for a year or two. If he was mine it wouldn't take me a minute to tell what I'd do."

Jane leaned back in her chair, her eyes on the crackling logs, and began patting the carpet with her foot. Lucy became engrossed in a book that lay on the table beside her. She didn't intend to take any part in the discussion. If Jane wanted Archie to serve as a common sailor that was Jane's business. Then again, it was, perhaps, just as well for a number of reasons to have him under the captain's care. He might become so fond of the sea as to want to follow it all his life.

"What do you think about it, Lucy?" asked Jane.

"Oh, I don't know anything about it. I don't really. I've lived so long away from here I don't know what the young men are doing for a living. He's always been fond of the sea, has he not, Captain Holt?"

"Allus," said the captain doggedly; "it's in his blood." Her answer nettled him. "You ain't got no objections, have you, ma'am?" he asked, looking straight at Lucy.

Lucy's color came and went. His tone offended her, especially before Mrs. Dellenbaugh, who, although she spoke but seldom in public had a tongue of her own when she chose to use it. She was not accustomed to being spoken to in so brusque a way. She understood perfectly well the captain's covert meaning, but she did not intend either to let him see it or to lose her temper.

"Oh, not the slightest," she answered with a light laugh. "I have no doubt that it will be the making of him to be with you. Poor boy, he certainly needs a father's care."

The captain winced in turn under the retort and his eyes flashed, but he made no reply.

Little Ellen had slipped out of the captain's lap during the colloquy. She had noticed the change in her friend's tone, and, with a child's intuition, had seen that the harmony was in danger of being broken. She stood by the captain's knee, not knowing whether to climb back again or to resume her seat by the window. Lucy, noticing the child's discomfort, called to her:

"Come here, Ellen, you will tire the captain."

The child crossed the room and stood by her mother while Lucy tried to rearrange the glossy curls, tangled by too close contact with the captain's broad shoulder. In the attempt Ellen lost her balance and fell into her mother's lap.

"Oh, Ellen!" said her mother coldly; "stand up, dear. You are so careless. See how you have mussed my gown. Now go over to the window and play with your dolls."

The captain noted the incident and heard Lucy's reproof, but he made no protest. Neither did he contradict the mother's statement that the little girl had tired him. His mind was occupied with other things—the tone of the mother's voice for one, and the shade of sadness that passed over the child's face for another. From that moment he took a positive dislike to her.

"Well, think it over, Miss Jane," he said, rising from his seat and reaching for his hat. "Plenty of time 'bout Archie. Life-savin' house won't be finished for the next two or three months; don't expect to git into it till June. Wonder, little Pond Lily, if the weather's goin' to be any warmer?" He slipped his hand under the child's chin and leaning over her head peered out of the window. "Don't look like it, does it, little one? Looks as if the snow would hold on. Hello! here comes the doctor. I'll wait a bit—good for sore eyes to see him, and I don't git a chance every day. Ask him 'bout Archie, Miss Jane. He'll tell ye whether the lad's too young."

There came a stamping of feet on the porch outside as Doctor John shook the snow from his boots, and the next instant he stepped into the room bringing with him all the freshness and sunshine of the outside world.

"Good-morning, good people," he cried, "every one of you! How very snug and cosey you look here! Ah, captain, where have you been keeping yourself? And Mrs. Dellenbaugh! This is indeed a pleasure. I have just passed the dear doctor, and he is looking as young as he did ten years ago. And my Lady Lucy! Down so early! Well, Mistress Martha, up again I see; I told you you'd be all right in a day or two."

This running fire of greetings was made with a pause before each inmate of the room—a hearty hand-shake for the bluff captain, the pressing of Mrs. Dellenbaugh's limp fingers, a low bow to Lucy, and a pat on Martha's plump shoulder.

Jane came last, as she always did. She had risen to greet him and was now unwinding the white silk handkerchief wrapped about his throat and helping him off with his fur tippet and gloves.

"Thank you, Jane. No, let me take it; it's rather wet," he added as he started to lay the heavy overcoat over a chair. "Wait a minute. I've some violets for you if they are not crushed in my pocket. They came last night," and he handed her a small parcel wrapped in tissue paper. This done, he took his customary place on the rug with his back to the blazing logs and began unbuttoning his trim frock-coat, bringing to view a double-breasted, cream-white waistcoat—he still dressed as a man of thirty, and always in the fashion—as well as a fluffy scarf which Jane had made for him with her own fingers.

"And what have I interrupted?" he asked, looking over the room. "One of your sea yarns, captain?"—here he reached over and patted the child's head, who had crept back to the captain's arms—"or some of my lady's news from Paris? You tell me, Jane," he added, with a smile, opening his thin, white, almost transparent fingers and holding them behind his back to the fire, a favorite attitude.

"Ask the captain, John." She had regained her seat and was reaching out for her work-basket, the violets now pinned in her bosom—her eyes had long since thanked him.

"No, do YOU tell me," he insisted, moving aside the table with her sewing materials and placing it nearer her chair.

"Well, but it's the captain who should speak," Jane replied, laughing, as she looked up into his face, her eyes filled with his presence. "He has startled us all with the most wonderful proposition. The Government is going to build a life-saving station at Barnegat beach, and they have offered him the position of keeper, and he says he will take it if I will let Archie go with him as one of his crew."

Doctor John's face instantly assumed a graver look. These forked roads confronting the career of a young life were important and not to be lightly dismissed.

"Well, what did you tell him?" he asked, looking down at Jane in the effort to read her thoughts.

"We are waiting for you to decide, John." The tone was the same she would have used had the doctor been her own husband and the boy their child.

Doctor John communed with himself for an instant. "Well, let us take a vote," he replied with an air as if each and every one in the room was interested in the decision. "We'll begin with Mistress Martha, and then Mrs. Dellenbaugh, and then you, Jane, and last our lady from over the sea. The captain has already sold his vote to his affections, and so must be counted out."

"Yes, but don't count me in, please," exclaimed Lucy with a merry laugh as she arose from her seat. "I don't know a thing about it. I've just told the dear captain so. I'm going upstairs this very moment to write some letters. Bonjour, Monsieur le Docteur; bonjour, Monsieur le Capitaine and Madame Dellenbaugh," and with a wave of her hand and a little dip of her head to each of the guests, she courtesied out of the room.

When the door was closed behind her she stopped in the hall, threw a glance at her face in the old-fashioned mirror, satisfied herself of her skill in preserving its beautiful rabbit's-foot bloom and freshness, gave her blonde hair one or two pats to keep it in place, rearranged the film of white lace about her shapely throat, and gathering up the mass of ruffled skirts that hid her pretty feet, slowly ascended the staircase.

Once inside her room and while the vote was being taken downstairs that decided Archie's fate she locked her door, dropped into a chair by the fire, took the unopened letter from her pocket, and broke the seal.

"Don't scold, little woman," it read. "I would have written before, but I've been awfully busy getting my place in order. It's all arranged now, however, for the summer. The hotel will be opened in June, and I have the best rooms in the house, the three on the corner overlooking the sea. Sue says she will, perhaps, stay part of the summer with me. Try and come up next week for the night. If not I'll bring Sue with me and come to you for the day.

"Your own Max."

For some minutes she sat gazing into the fire, the letter in her hand.

"It's about time, Mr. Max Feilding," she said at last with a sigh of relief as she rose from her seat and tucked the letter into her desk. "You've had string enough, my fine fellow; now it's my turn. If I had known you would have stayed behind in Paris all these months and kept me waiting here I'd have seen you safe aboard the steamer. The hotel opens in June, does it? Well, I can just about stand it here until then; after that I'd go mad. This place bores me to death."



CHAPTER XVI

THE BEGINNING OF THE EBB

Spring has come and gone. The lilacs and crocuses, the tulips and buttercups, have bloomed and faded; the lawn has had its sprinkling of dandelions, and the duff of their blossoms has drifted past the hemlocks and over the tree-tops. The grass has had its first cutting; the roses have burst their buds and hang in clusters over the arbors; warm winds blow in from the sea laden with perfumes from beach and salt-marsh; the skies are steely blue and the cloud puffs drift lazily. It is summer-time—the season of joy and gladness, the season of out-of-doors.

All the windows at Yardley are open; the porch has donned an awning—its first—colored white and green, shading big rocking-chairs and straw tables resting on Turkish rugs. Lucy had wondered why in all the years that Jane had lived alone at Yardley she had never once thought of the possibilities of this porch. Jane had agreed with her, and so, under Lucy's direction, the awnings had been put up and the other comforts inaugurated. Beneath its shade Lucy sits and reads or embroiders or answers her constantly increasing correspondence.

The porch serves too as a reception-room, the vines being thick and the occupants completely hidden from view. Here Lucy often spreads a small table, especially when Max Feilding drives over in his London drag from Beach Haven on Barnegat beach. On these occasions, if the weather is warm, she refreshes him with delicate sandwiches and some of her late father's rare Scotch whiskey (shelved in the cellar for thirty years) or with the more common brands of cognac served in the old family decanters.

Of late Max had become a constant visitor. His own ancestors had made honorable records in the preceding century, and were friends of the earlier Cobdens during the Revolution. This, together with the fact that he had visited Yardley when Lucy was a girl—on his first return from Paris, in fact—and that the acquaintance had been kept up while he was a student abroad, was reason enough for his coming with such frequency.

His drag, moreover, as it whirled into Yardley's gate, gave a certain air of eclat to the Manor House that it had not known since the days of the old colonel. Nothing was lacking that money and taste could furnish. The grays were high-steppers and smooth as satin, the polished chains rattled and clanked about the pole; the body was red and the wheels yellow, the lap-robe blue, with a monogram; and the diminutive boy studded with silver buttons bearing the crest of the Feilding family was as smart as the tailor could make him.

And the owner himself, in his whity-brown driving-coat with big pearl buttons, yellow gloves, and gray hat, looked every inch the person to hold the ribbons. Altogether it was a most fashionable equipage, owned and driven by a most fashionable man.

As for the older residents of Warehold, they had only words of praise for the turnout. Uncle Ephraim declared that it was a "Jim Dandy," which not only showed his taste, but which also proved how much broader that good-natured cynic had become in later years. Billy Tatham gazed at it with staring eyes as it trundled down the highway and turned into the gate, and at once determined to paint two of his hacks bright yellow and give each driver a lap-robe with the letter "T" worked in high relief.

The inmates of Yardley were not quite so enthusiastic. Martha was glad that her bairn was having such a good time, and she would often stand on the porch with little Ellen's hand in hers and wave to Max and Lucy as they dashed down the garden road and out through the gate, the tiger behind; but Jane, with that quick instinct which some women possess, recognized something in Feilding's manner which she could not put into words, and so held her peace. She had nothing against Max, but she did not like him. Although he was most considerate of her feelings and always deferred to her, she felt that any opposition on her part to their outings would have made no difference to either one of them. He asked her permission, of course, and she recognized the courtesy, but nothing that he ever did or said overcame her dislike of him.

Doctor John's personal attitude and bearing toward Feilding was an enigma not only to Jane, but to others who saw it. He invariably greeted him, whenever they met, with marked, almost impressive cordiality, but it never passed a certain limit of reserve; a certain dignity of manner which Max had recognized the first day he shook hands with him. It recalled to Feilding some of his earlier days, when he was a student in Paris. There had been a supper in Max's room that ended at daylight—no worse in its features than dozens of others in the Quartier—to which an intimate friend of the doctor's had been invited, and upon which, as Max heard afterward, the doctor had commented rather severely.

Max realized, therefore, but too well that the distinguished physician—known now over half the State—understood him, and his habits, and his kind as thoroughly as he did his own ease of instruments. He realized, too, that there was nothing about his present appearance or surroundings or daily life that could lead so thoughtful a man of the world as Dr. John Cavendish, of Barnegat, to conclude that he had changed in any way for the better.

And yet this young gentleman could never have been accused of burning his candle at both ends. He had no flagrant vices really—none whose posters were pasted on the victim's face. Neither cards nor any other form of play interested him, nor did the wine tempt him when it was red—or of any other color, for that matter, nor did he haunt the dressing-rooms of chorus girls and favorites of the hour. His innate refinement and good taste prevented any such uses of his spare time. His weakness—for it could hardly be called a vice—was narrowed down to one infirmity, and one only: this was his inability to be happy without the exclusive society of some one woman.

Who the woman might be depended very largely on whom he might be thrown with. In the first ten years of his majority—his days of poverty when a student—it had been some girl in exile, like himself. During the last ten years—since his father's death and his inheritance—it had been a loose end picked out of the great floating drift—that social flotsam and jetsam which eddies in and out of the casinos of Nice and Monte Carlo, flows into Aix and Trouville in summer and back again to Rome and Cairo in winter—a discontented wife perhaps; or an unmarried woman of thirty-five or forty, with means enough to live where she pleased; or it might be some self-exiled Russian countess or English-woman of quality who had a month off, and who meant to make the most of it. All most respectable people, of course, without a breath of scandal attaching to their names—Max was too careful for that—and yet each and every one on the lookout for precisely the type of man that Max represented: one never happy or even contented when outside the radius of a waving fan or away from the flutter of a silken skirt.

It was in one of these resorts of the idle, a couple of years before, while Lucy's husband and little Ellen were home in Geneva, that Max had met her, and where he had renewed the acquaintance of their childhood—an acquaintance which soon ripened into the closest friendship.

Hence his London drag and appointments; hence the yacht and a four-in-hand—then a great novelty—all of which he had promised her should she decide to join him at home. Hence, too, his luxuriously fitted-up bachelor quarters in Philadelphia, and his own comfortable apartments in his late father's house, where his sister Sue lived; and hence, too, his cosey rooms in the best corner of the Beach Haven hotel, with a view overlooking Barnegat Light and the sea.

None of these things indicated in the smallest degree that this noble gentleman contemplated finally settling down in a mansion commensurate with his large means, where he and the pretty widow could enjoy their married life together; nothing was further from his mind—nothing could be—he loved his freedom too much. What he wanted, and what he intended to have, was her undivided companionship—at least for the summer; a companionship without any of the uncomfortable complications which would have arisen had he selected an unmarried woman or the wife of some friend to share his leisure and wealth.

The woman he picked out for the coming season suited him exactly. She was blonde, with eyes, mouth, teeth, and figure to his liking (he had become critical in forty odd years—twenty passed as an expert); dressed in perfect taste, and wore her clothes to perfection; had a Continental training that made her mistress of every situation, receiving with equal ease and graciousness anybody, from a postman to a prince, sending them away charmed and delighted; possessed money enough of her own not to be too much of a drag upon him; and—best of all (and this was most important to the heir of Walnut Hill)—had the best blood of the State circling in her veins. Whether this intimacy might drift into something closer, compelling him to take a reef in his sails, never troubled him. It was not the first time that he had steered his craft between the Scylla of matrimony and the Charybdis of scandal, and he had not the slightest doubt of his being able to do it again.

As for Lucy, she had many plans in view. One was to get all the fun possible out of the situation; another was to provide for her future. How this was to be accomplished she had not yet determined. Her plans were laid, but some of them she knew from past experience might go astray. On one point she had made up her mind—not to be in a hurry. In furtherance of these schemes she had for some days—some months, in fact—been making preparations for an important move. She knew that its bare announcement would come as a surprise to Jane and Martha and, perhaps, as a shock, but that did not shake her purpose. She furthermore expected more or less opposition when they fully grasped her meaning. This she intended to overcome. Neither Jane nor Martha, she said to herself, could be angry with her for long, and a few kisses and an additional flow of good-humor would soon set them to laughing again.

To guard against the possibility of a too prolonged interview with Jane, ending, perhaps, in a disagreeable scene—one beyond her control—she had selected a sunny summer morning for the stage setting of her little comedy and an hour when Feilding was expected to call for her in his drag. She and Max were to make a joint inspection that day of his new apartment at Beach Haven, into which he had just moved, as well as the stable containing the three extra vehicles and equine impedimenta, which were to add to their combined comfort and enjoyment.

Lucy had been walking in the garden looking at the rose-beds, her arm about her sister's slender waist, her ears open to the sound of every passing vehicle—Max was expected at any moment—when she began her lines.

"You won't mind, Jane, dear, will you, if I get together a few things and move over to Beach Haven for a while?" she remarked simply, just as she might have done had she asked permission to go upstairs to take a nap. "I think we should all encourage a new enterprise like the hotel, especially old families like ours. And then the sea air always does me so much good. Nothing like Trouville air, my dear husband used to tell me, when I came back in the autumn. You don't mind, do you?"

"For how long, Lucy?" asked Jane, with a tone of disappointment in her voice, as she placed her foot on the top step of the porch.

"Oh, I can't tell. Depends very much on how I like it." As she spoke she drew up an easy-chair for Jane and settled herself in another. Then she added carelessly: "Oh, perhaps a month—perhaps two."

"Two months!" exclaimed Jane in astonishment, dropping into her seat. "Why, what do you want to leave Yardley for? O Lucy, don't—please don't go!"

"But you can come over, and I can come here," rejoined Lucy in a coaxing tone.

"Yes; but I don't want to come over. I want you at home. And it's so lovely here. I have never seen the garden look so beautiful; and you have your own room, and this little porch is so cosey. The hotel is a new building, and the doctor says a very damp one, with everything freshly plastered. He won't let any of his patients go there for some weeks, he tells me. Why should you want to go? I really couldn't think of it, dear. I'd miss you dreadfully."

"You dear old sister," answered Lucy, laying her parasol on the small table beside her, "you are so old-fashioned. Habit, if nothing else, would make me go. I have hardly passed a summer in Paris or Geneva since I left you; and you know how delightful my visits to Biarritz used to be years ago. Since my marriage I have never stayed in any one place so long as this. I must have the sea air."

"But the salt water is right here, Lucy, within a short walk of our gate, and the air is the same." Jane's face wore a troubled look, and there was an anxious, almost frightened tone in her voice.

"No, it is not exactly the same," Lucy answered positively, as if she had made a life-long study of climate; "and if it were, the life is very different. I love Warehold, of course; but you must admit that it is half-asleep all the time. The hotel will be some change; there will be new people and something to see from the piazzas. And I need it, dear. I get tired of one thing all the time—I always have."

"But you will be just as lonely there." Jane in her astonishment was like a blind man feeling about for a protecting wall.

"No; Max and his sister will be at Beach Haven, and lots of others I know. No, I won't be lonely," and an amused expression twinkled in her eyes.

Jane sat quite still. Some of Captain Holt's blunt, outspoken criticisms floated through her brain.

"Have you any reason for wanting to leave here?" she asked, raising her eyes and looking straight at Lucy.

"No, certainly not. How foolish, dear, to ask me! I'm never so happy as when I am with you."

"Well, why then should you want to give up your home and all the comforts you need—your flowers, garden, and everything you love, and this porch, which you have just made so charming, to go to a damp, half-completed hotel, without a shrub about it—only a stretch of desolate sand with the tide going in and out?" There was a tone of suspicion in Jane's voice that Lucy had never heard from her sister's lips—never, in all her life.

"Oh, because I love the tides, if nothing else," she answered with a sentimental note in her voice. "Every six hours they bring me a new message. I could spend whole mornings watching the tides come and go. During my long exile you don't know how I dreamed every night of the dear tides of Barnegat. If you had been away from all you love as many years as I have, you would understand how I could revel in the sound of the old breakers."

For some moments Jane did not answer. She knew from the tones of Lucy's voice and from the way she spoke that she did not mean it. She had heard her talk that way to some of the villagers when she wanted to impress them, but she had never spoken in the same way to her.

"You have some other reason, Lucy. Is it Max?" she asked in a strained tone.

Lucy colored. She had not given her sister credit for so keen an insight into the situation. Jane's mind was evidently working in a new direction. She determined to face the suspicion squarely; the truth under some conditions is better than a lie.

"Yes," she replied, with an assumed humility and with a tone as if she had been detected in a fault and wanted to make a clean breast of it. "Yes—now that you have guessed it—it IS Max."

"Don't you think it would be better to see him here instead of at the hotel?" exclaimed Jane, her eyes still boring into Lucy's.

"Perhaps"—the answer came in a helpless way—"but that won't do much good. I want to keep my promise to him if I can."

"What was your promise?" Jane's eyes lost their searching look for an instant, but the tone of suspicion still vibrated.

Lucy hesitated and began playing with the trimming on her dress.

"Well, to tell you the truth, dear, a few days ago in a burst of generosity I got myself into something of a scrape. Max wants his sister Sue to spend the summer with him, and I very foolishly promised to chaperon her. She is delighted over the prospect, for she must have somebody, and I haven't the heart to disappoint her. Max has been so kind to me that I hate now to tell him I can't go. That's all, dear. I don't like to speak of obligations of this sort, and so at first I only told you half the truth."

"You should always keep your promise, dear," Jane answered thoughtfully and with a certain relieved tone. (Sue was nearly thirty, but that did not occur to Jane.) "But this time I wish you had not promised. I am sorry, too, for little Ellen. She will miss her little garden and everything she loves here; and then again, Archie will miss her, and so will Captain Holt and Martha. You know as well as I do that a hotel is no place for a child."

"I am glad to hear you say so. That's why I shall not take her with me." As she spoke she shot an inquiring glance from the corner of her eyes at the anxious face of her sister. These last lines just before the curtain fell were the ones she had dreaded most.

Jane half rose from her seat. Her deep eyes were wide open, gazing in astonishment at Lucy. For an instant she felt as if her heart had stopped beating.

"And you—you—are not going to take Ellen with you!" she gasped.

"No, of course not." She saw her sister's agitation, but she did not intend to notice it. Besides, her expectant ear had caught the sound of Max's drag as it whirled through the gate. "I always left her with her grandmother when she was much younger than she is now. She is very happy here and I wouldn't be so cruel as to take her away from all her pleasures. Then she loves old people. See how fond she is of the Captain and Martha! No, you are right. I wouldn't think of taking her away."

Jane was standing now, her eyes blazing, her lips quivering.

"You mean, Lucy, that you would leave your child here and spend two months away from her?"

The wheels were crunching the gravel within a rod of the porch. Max had already lifted his hat.

"But, sister, you don't understand—" The drag stopped and Max, with uncovered head, sprang out and extended his hand to Jane.

Before he could offer his salutations Lucy's joyous tones rang out.

"Just in the nick of time, Max," she cried. "I've just been telling my dear sister that I'm going to move over to Beach Haven to-morrow, bag and baggage, and she is delighted at the news. Isn't it just like her?"



CHAPTER XVII

BREAKERS AHEAD

The summer-home of Max Feilding, Esq., of Walnut Hill, and of the beautiful and accomplished widow of the dead Frenchman was located on a levelled sand-dune in full view of the sea. Indeed, from beneath its low-hooded porticos and piazzas nothing else could be seen except, perhaps, the wide sky—gray, mottled, or intensely blue, as the weather permitted—the stretch of white sand shaded from dry to wet and edged with tufts of yellow grass; the circling gulls and the tall finger of Barnegat Light pointing skyward. Nothing, really, but some scattering buildings in silhouette against the glare of the blinding light—one the old House of Refuge, a mile away to the north, and nearer by, the new Life Saving Station (now complete) in charge of Captain Nat Holt and his crew of trusty surfmen.

This view Lucy always enjoyed. She would sit for hours under her awnings and watch the lazy boats crawling in and out of the inlet, or the motionless steamers—motionless at that distance—slowly unwinding their threads of smoke. The Station particularly interested her. Somehow she felt a certain satisfaction in knowing that Archie was at work and that he had at last found his level among his own people—not that she wished him any harm; she only wanted him out of her way.

The hostelry itself was one of those low-roofed, shingle-sided and shingle-covered buildings common in the earlier days along the Jersey coast, and now supplanted by more modern and more costly structures. It had grown from a farm-house and out-buildings to its present state with the help of an architect and a jig-saw; the former utilizing what remained of the house and its barns, and the latter transforming plain pine into open work patterns with which to decorate its gable ends and facade. When the flags were raised, the hanging baskets suspended in each loop of the porches, and the merciless, omnipresent and ever-insistent sand was swept from its wide piazzas and sun-warped steps it gave out an air of gayety so plausible and enticing that many otherwise sane and intelligent people at once closed their comfortable homes and entered their names in its register.

The amusements of these habitues—if they could be called habitues, this being their first summer—were as varied as their tastes. There was a band which played mornings and afternoons in an unpainted pine pagoda planted on a plot of slowly dying grass and decorated with more hanging baskets and Chinese lanterns; there was bathing at eleven and four; and there was croquet on the square of cement fenced about by poles and clothes-lines at all hours. Besides all this there were driving parties to the villages nearby; dancing parties at night with the band in the large room playing away for dear life, with all the guests except the very young and very old tucked away in twos in the dark corners of the piazzas out of reach of the lights and the inquisitive—in short, all the diversions known to such retreats, so necessary for warding off ennui and thus inducing the inmates to stay the full length of their commitments.

In its selection Max was guided by two considerations: it was near Yardley—this would materially aid in Lucy's being able to join him—and it was not fashionable and, therefore, not likely to be overrun with either his own or Lucy's friends. The amusements did not interest him; nor did they interest Lucy. Both had seen too much and enjoyed too much on the other side of the water, at Nice, at Monte Carlo, and Biarritz, to give the amusements a thought. What they wanted was to be let alone; this would furnish all the excitement either of them needed. This exclusiveness was greatly helped by the red and yellow drag, with all its contiguous and connecting impedimenta, a turnout which never ceased to occupy everybody's attention whenever the small tiger stood by the heads of the satin-coated grays awaiting the good pleasure of his master and his lady. Its possession not only marked a social eminence too lofty for any ordinary habitue to climb to unless helped up by the proffered hand of the owner, but it prevented anyone of these would-be climbers from inviting either its owner or his companion to join in other outings no matter how enjoyable. Such amusements as they could offer were too simple and old-fashioned for two distinguished persons who held the world in their slings and who were whirling it around their heads with all their might. The result was that their time was their own.

They filled it at their pleasure.

When the tide was out and the sand hard, they drove on the beach, stopping at the new station, chatting with Captain Holt or Archie; or they strolled north, always avoiding the House of Refuge—that locality had too many unpleasant associations for Lucy, or they sat on the dunes, moving back out of the wet as the tide reached them, tossing pebbles in the hollows, or gathering tiny shells, which Lucy laid out in rows of letters as she had done when a child. In the afternoon they drove by way of Yardley to see how Ellen was getting on, or idled about Warehold, making little purchases at the shops and chatting with the village people, all of whom would come out to greet them. After dinner they would generally betake themselves to Max's portico, opening out of his rooms, or to Lucy's—they were at opposite ends of the long corridor—where the two had their coffee while Max smoked.

The opinions freely expressed regarding their social and moral status, and individual and combined relations, differed greatly in the several localities in which they were wont to appear. In Warehold village they were looked upon as two most charming and delightful people, rich, handsome, and of proper age and lineage, who were exactly adapted to each other and who would prove it before the year was out, with Pastor Dellenbaugh officiating, assisted by some dignitary from Philadelphia.

At the hostelry many of the habitues had come to a far different conclusion. Marriage was not in either of their heads, they maintained; their intimacy was a purely platonic one, born of a friendship dating back to childhood—they were cousins really—Max being the dearest and most unselfish creature in the world, he having given up all his pleasures elsewhere to devote himself to a most sweet and gracious lady whose grief was still severe and who would really be quite alone in the world were it not for her little daughter, now temporarily absent.

This summary of facts, none of which could be questioned, was supplemented and enriched by another conclusive instalment from Mrs. Walton Coates, of Chestnut Plains, who had met Lucy at Aix the year before, and who therefore possessed certain rights not vouchsafed to the other habitues of Beach Haven—an acquaintance which Lucy, for various reasons, took pains to encourage—Mrs. C.'s social position being beyond question, and her house and other appointments more than valuable whenever Lucy should visit Philadelphia: besides, Mrs. Coates's own and Lucy's apartments joined, and the connecting door of the two sitting-rooms was often left open, a fact which established a still closer intimacy. This instalment, given in a positive and rather lofty way, made plain the fact that in her enforced exile the distinguished lady not only deserved the thanks of every habitue of the hotel, but of the whole country around, for selecting the new establishment in which to pass the summer, instead of one of the more fashionable resorts elsewhere.

This outburst of the society leader, uttered in the hearing of a crowded piazza, had occurred after a conversation she had had with Lucy concerning little Ellen.

"Tell me about your little daughter," Mrs. Coates had said. "You did not leave her abroad, did you?"

"Oh, no, my dear Mrs. Coates! I am really here on my darling's account," Lucy answered with a sigh. "My old home is only a short distance from here. But the air does not agree with me there, and so I came here to get a breath of the real sea. Ellen is with her aunt, my dear sister Jane. I wanted to bring her, but really I hadn't the heart to take her from them; they are so devoted to her. Max loves her dearly. He drives me over there almost every day. I really do not know how I could have borne all the sorrows I have had this year without dear Max. He is like a brother to me, and SO thoughtful. You know we have known each other since we were children. They tell such dreadful stories, too, about him, but I have never seen that side of him, he's a perfect saint to me."

From that time on Mrs. Coates was her loyal mouthpiece and devoted friend. Being separated from one's child was one of the things she could not brook; Lucy was an angel to stand it as she did. As for Max—no other woman had ever so influenced him for good, nor did she believe any other woman could.

At the end of the second week a small fly no larger than a pin's head began to develop in the sunshine of their amber. It became visible to the naked eye when Max suddenly resolved to leave his drag, his tiger, his high-stepping grays, and his fair companion, and slip over to Philadelphia—for a day or two, he explained. His lawyer needed him, he said, and then again he wanted to see his sister Sue, who had run down to Walnut Hill for the day. (Sue, it might as well be stated, had not yet put in an appearance at Beach Haven, nor had she given any notice of her near arrival; a fact which had not disturbed Lucy in the least until she attempted to explain to Jane.)

"I've got to pull up, little woman, and get out for a few days," Max had begun. "Morton's all snarled up, he writes me, over a mortgage, and I must straighten it out. I'll leave Bones [the tiger] and everything just as it is. Don't mind, do you?"

"Mind! Of course I do!" retorted Lucy. "When did you get this marvellous idea into that wonderful brain of yours, Max? I intended to go to Warehold myself to-morrow." She spoke with her usual good-humor, but with a slight trace of surprise and disappointment in her tone.

"When I opened my mail this morning; but my going won't make any difference about Warehold. Bones and the groom will take care of you."

Lucy leaned back in her chair and looked over the rail of the porch. She had noticed lately a certain restraint in Max's manner which was new to her. Whether he was beginning to get bored, or whether it was only one of his moods, she could not decide—even with her acute knowledge of similar symptoms. That some change, however, had come over him she had not the slightest doubt. She never had any trouble in lassoing her admirers. That came with a glance of her eye or a lift of her pretty shoulders: nor for that matter in keeping possession of them as long as her mood lasted.

"Whom do you want to see in Philadelphia, Max?" she asked, smiling roguishly at him. She held him always by presenting her happiest and most joyous side, whether she felt it or not.

"Sue and Morton—and you, you dear girl, if you'll come along."

"No; I'm not coming along. I'm too comfortable where I am. Is this woman somebody you haven't told me of, Max?" she persisted, looking at him from under half-closed lids.

"Your somebodies are always thin air, little girl; you know everything I have ever done in my whole life," Max answered gravely. She had for the last two weeks.

Lucy threw up her hands and laughed so loud and cheerily that an habitue taking his morning constitutional on the boardwalk below turned his head in their direction. The two were at breakfast under the awnings of Lucy's portico, Bones standing out of range.

"You don't believe it?"

"Not one word of it, you fraud; nor do you. You've forgotten one-half of all you've done and the other half you wouldn't dare tell any woman. Come, give me her name. Anybody Sue knows?"

"Nobody that anybody knows, Honest John." Then he added as an after-thought, "Are you sorry?" As he spoke he rose from his seat and stood behind her chair looking down over her figure. She had her back to him. He thought he had never seen her look so lovely. She was wearing a light-blue morning-gown, her arms bare to the elbows, and a wide Leghorn hat—the morning costume of all others he liked her best in.