her usual composed fashion that is yet
neither cold nor repellant, "I find Uncle Christopher, also, altogether
charming!"

The "also" is very happy. It is not to be misunderstood, and is full of
subtle flattery. Dulcinea yields to it, and turns, eyes and lips bright
with a warm smile, upon Miss Vibart.

"Yes; he is quite everything that is nice," she says, gracefully
ignoring the compliment to herself. "Now, shall we come and sit on the
balcony until dinner is ready; as a rule, we assemble there in Summer
instead of in the drawing-room, which, of course, is more convenient,
and decidedly more gloomy."

"I have an all-conquering curiosity to know everything about everybody
down here," says Portia, as they reach the balcony. Dulce pushes a low,
sleepy-looking chair toward her, and, sinking gracefully into it, she
turns her eyes up to her cousin. "Tell me all about your Roger," she
says, languidly. "As I must begin with somebody, I think I shall prefer
beginning with--with--what shall I call him? Your young man?"

"It sounds like Martha's baker's boy," says Dulce, laughing; "but you
may call Roger what you like. I wish with all my heart you could call
him husband, as that would take him out of my way."

They are standing on the balcony, and are looking toward the South.
Beyond them stretch the lawns, green and sloping; from below, the breath
of the sleeping flowers comes up to greet them; through the trees in the
far, far distance comes to them a glimpse of the great ocean as it lies
calm and silent, almost to melancholy, but for the soft lap, lapping of
the waves upon the pebbly shore.

"Some one told me he was very handsome," says Portia, at a venture.
Perhaps she has heard this, perhaps she hasn't. It even seems to her
there is more truth in the "has" than in the "hasn't."

"I have seen uglier people," admits Dulcinea, regretfully; "when he has
his face washed, and his hair brushed, he isn't half a bad boy."

"Boy?" asks Portia, doubtfully; to her the foregoing speech is full of
difficulty.

"I daresay _you_ would call him a man," says Dulce, with a shrug of her
soft shoulders; "but really he isn't. If you had grown up with him, as I
have, you would never think of him as being anything but an overgrown
baby, and a very cross one. That is the worst of being brought up with a
person, and being told one is to marry him by-and-by. It rather takes
the gilt off him, I think," says Dulce with a small smile.

"But