resently he could see
lying at her landing in the bay, across the sandy tract to the left of
the hotels. From time to time he almost stopped in his rapid walk, as
a man does whose mind is in a pleasant tumult; and then he went forward
at a swifter pace. "She's charming!" he said, and he thought he had
spoken aloud. He found himself floundering about in the deep sand,
wide of the path; he got back to it, and reached the boat just before
she started. The clerk came to take his fare, and Corey looked
radiantly up at him in his lantern-light, with a smile that he must
have been wearing a long time; his cheek was stiff with it. Once some
people who stood near him edged suddenly and fearfully away, and then
he suspected himself of having laughed outright.

XI.

COREY put off his set smile with the help of a frown, of which he first
became aware after reaching home, when his father asked--

"Anything gone wrong with your department of the fine arts to-day, Tom?"

"Oh no--no, sir," said the son, instantly relieving his brows from the
strain upon them, and beaming again. "But I was thinking whether you
were not perhaps right in your impression that it might be well for you
to make Colonel Lapham's acquaintance before a great while."

"Has he been suggesting it in any way?" asked Bromfield Corey, laying
aside his book and taking his lean knee between his clasped hands.

"Oh, not at all!" the young man hastened to reply. "I was merely
thinking whether it might not begin to seem intentional, your not doing
it."

"Well, Tom, you know I have been leaving it altogether to you----"

"Oh, I understand, of course, and I didn't mean to urge anything of the
kind----"

"You are so very much more of a Bostonian than I am, you know, that
I've been waiting your motion in entire confidence that you would know
just what to do, and when to do it. If I had been left quite to my own
lawless impulses, I think I should have called upon your padrone at
once. It seems to me that my father would have found some way of
showing that he expected as much as that from people placed in the
relation to him that we hold to Colonel Lapham."

"Do you think so?" asked the young man.

"Yes. But you know I don't pretend to be an authority in such matters.
As far as they go, I am always in the hands of your mother and you
children."

"I'm very sorry, sir. I had no idea I was over-ruling your judgment.
I only wanted to spare you a formal