that we met and here we parted. But what a different place it was then!
A lovely cape, half bleak moorland and half shaggy wood, a few rocky
headlands and a great many coots and gulls, and one solitary old
farmhouse standing just where that spick-and-span summer hotel, with
its balconies and cupolas, stands now. So it was nineteen years ago,
and so it may be again, perhaps, nine hundred years hence; but
meanwhile, what a pretty array of modern aesthetic cottages, and plank
walks, and bridges, and bathing-houses, and pleasure-boats! And what an
admirable concourse of well-dressed and pleasurably inclined men and
women! After all, my countrymen are the finest-looking and most
prosperous-appearing people on the globe. They have traveled a little
faster than I have, and on a somewhat different track; but I would
rather be among them than anywhere else. Yes, I won't go back to
London, nor yet to Paris, or Calcutta, or Cairo. I'll buy a cottage
here at Squittig Point, and live and die here and in New York. I wonder
whether Mary is alive and mother of a dozen children, or--not!"

"Auntie," said Miss Leithe to her relative, as they regained the
veranda of their cottage after their morning stroll on the beach, "who
was that gentleman who looked at us?"

"Hey?--who?" inquired the widow of the late Mr. Corwin, absently.

"The one in the thin gray suit and Panama hat; you must have seen him.
A very distinguished-looking man and yet very simple and pleasant;
like some of those nice middle-aged men that you see in 'Punch,'
slenderly built, with handsome chin and eyes, and thick mustache and
whiskers. Oh, auntie, why do you never notice things? I think a man
between forty and fifty is ever so much nicer than when they're
younger. They know how to be courteous, and they're not afraid of being