aciturn
that they used to consider it a great triumph when they had succeeded in
drawing out Minerva's laugh--for they always called her Minerva behind
Mrs. Rutherford's back. It may be that this had had something to do with
her liking for them; for, in her heart, Miss Poindexter considered her
baptismal name both a euphonious and dignified one, and much to be
preferred to the French frivolity of the title to which she was obliged
to answer.

"But where is Margaret?" said Mrs. Rutherford, turning.

A third person, who had been looking at the new scene about her--the
orange-trees, the palmettoes, the blue water of the Espiritu beyond the
low sea-wall, and the fringe of tropical forest on Patricio
opposite--now stepped from the carriage.

"I was beginning to think that there had been some change of plan, Mrs.
Harold, and that you had not come," said Winthrop, going back to the
carriage to assist her.

Margaret Harold smiled. Her smile was a very pleasant one; she and
Winthrop greeted each other with what seemed like a long-established,
though quiet and well-governed, coldness.

CHAPTER IV.

Later in the evening Mrs. Rutherford was sitting with her nephew on the
piazza of her new residence, the little house he had engaged for her use
during her stay in Gracias; they were looking at the moonlight on the
lagoon.

The little residence had but one story, and that story was a second one.
It had been built above an old passageway of stone, which had led from
the Franciscan monastery down to the monks' landing-place on the shore;
the passageway made a turn at a right angle not far from the water, and
this angle had been taken possession of by the later architect, who had
rested his square superstructure solidly on the old walls at the south
and west, and had then built a light open arch below to support the two
remaining sides, thus securing an elevated position, and a beautiful
view of the sea beyond Patricio, at comparatively small expense for his
high foundation. An outside stairway of stone, which made a picturesque
turn on the way, led up to the door of this abode, and, taken
altogether, it was an odd and pleasant little eyrie on a pleasant shore.

Evert Winthrop, however, when he secured it for his aunt, had not been
thinking so much of its pleasantness as its freedom from damp, Mrs.
Rutherford having long been of the opinion that most of the evils of
life, mental, moral, and physical, and even in a great