uit of happiness,
rented the old place, put in carpenters and masons and glaziers, and,
when the last tenants vacated the premises, took possession in state
themselves. Care and responsibility were not theirs; the matron and her
servants alone received such guests; the long summer-days were to come
and go with them as joyously as with Bacchus and his crew.

Behold the party domesticated a fortnight at the Bawn, as it was
afterward dubbed. Mr. Laudersdale had returned to New York that morning,
and his wife had not been met since. Now, at about five o'clock, her
white robe floated past the door, and she was seen moving up and down
the long piazza and humming a faint little tune to herself. Just then
a flock of young women, married and single, fluttered through door and
windows to join her; and just then Mrs. Laudersdale stepped down from
the end of the piazza and floated up the garden-path and into the woods
that skirted the lake-shore and stretched far back and away. Thus
abandoned, the others turned their attention to the expanse before and
below them; and one or two made their way down to the brink, unhooked
a boat, ventured in, and, lifting the single pair of oars, were soon
laboring gayly out and creating havoc on the placid waters.

As Mrs. Laudersdale continued to walk, the path which she followed
slowly descended to the pebbly rim, rich in open spaces, slopes of
verdure just gilding in the declining sun, and coverts of cool, deep
shadow. As she advanced leisurely, involved in pleasant fancy, something
caught her eye, an unusual object, certainly, lying in a duskier recess;
she drew nearer and hung a moment above it. Some fallen statue among
rank Roman growth, some marble semblance of a young god, overlaced with
a vine and plunged in tall ferns and beaded grasses? And she, bending
there,--was it Diana and Endymion over again, Psyche and Eros? Ah,
no!--simply Mrs. Laudersdale and Roger Raleigh. Only while one might
have counted sixty did she linger to take the real beauty of the scene:
the youth, adopted, as it were, to Nature's heart by the clustering
growth that sprang up rebounding under the careless weight that crushed
it; an attitude of complete and unconscious grace,--one arm thrown out
beneath the head, the other listlessly fallen down his side, while the
hand still detained the straw hat; the profile, by no means classic, but
in strong relief, the dark hair blowing in the gentle wind, the flush
of sleep tha