conference had been carried--"between ourselves, my dear Frederic, I
am never quite easy with these patterns to the rest of human-kind. I
should even prefer a tiny vein of depravity to such very rectangular
virtue."

"You are seldom ill at ease, if human perfection is all that renders
you uncomfortable," responded Frederic. "There are not many in whose
composition one cannot trace, not a tiny, but a broad vein of Adamic
nature. What a delicious morning!" he added, sauntering to the
window.

"And how sorry I am for those who did not get up in time to enjoy
the freshness of its beauty!" cried a gay voice from the portico,
and Mabel entered by the glass door behind him--her hands loaded
with roses, herself so beaming that her lover refrained with
difficulty from kissing the saucy mouth then and there.

He did take both her hands, under pretext of relieving her of the
flowers, and Aunt Rachel judiciously turned her back upon them, and
began a diligent search in the beaufet for a vase.

"Do you expect us to believe that you have been more industrious
than we? As if we did not know that you bribed the gardener to have
a bouquet cut and laid ready for you at the back-door," Frederic
charged upon the matutinal Flora. "Else, where are other evidences
of your stroll, in dew-sprinkled draperies and wet feet? Confess
that you ran down stairs just two minutes ago! Now that I come to
think of it, I am positive that I heard you, while Mrs. Sutton was
lamenting your drowsy proclivities after sunrise."