natural. I mean this one looks as if he would. But he must be somebody
remarkable in some way--don't you think so? There's something about
him--something graceful and gentle and refined and manly--that makes
most other men seem common beside him. Who do you suppose he can be?"

"Who?--what have you been saying, my dear?" inquired Aunt Corwin,
rousing herself from the perusal of a letter. "Here's Sarah writes that
Frank Redmond was to sail from Havre the 20th; so he won't be here for
a week or ten days yet."

"Well, he might not have come at all," said the girl, coloring
slightly. "I'm sure I didn't think he would, when he went away."

"You are both of you a year older and wiser," said the widow,
meditatively; "and you have learned, I hope, not to irritate a man
needlessly. I never irritated Corwin in all my life. They don't
understand it."

"Here comes Mr. Haymaker," observed Miss Leithe. "I shall ask him."

"Don't ask him in," said Mrs. Corwin, retiring; "he chatters like an
organ-grinder."

"Oh, good-morning, Miss Mary!" exclaimed Mr. Haymaker, as he mounted
the steps of the veranda, with his hands extended and his customary
effusion. "How charming you are looking after your bath and your walk
and all! Did you ever see such a charming morning? I never was at a
place I liked so much as Squittig Point; the new Newport, I call it--
eh? the new Newport. So fashionable already, and only been going, as
one might say, three or four years! Such charming people here! Oh, by-