h when she
said she was unlucky.

"You unlucky!" I exclaimed. "You are one of those women who have it in
their power to have every wish in life granted."

"I am not so sure of that. Besides, it is hard for me to know what I
want now-a-days. I used to think if a fairy came offering me the
fulfilment of my dearest longing, it would be easy enough to secure
lifelong happiness at once: I should have asked for wealth. But now they
are comfortable at home: they would not know how to spend more money
than papa earns at the factory. And I am comparatively rich: I have
almost five hundred dollars in my purse, part of the thousand which
Helen gave me a month ago. I cried myself to sleep last night, I was so
unhappy; yet, all the same, I am not quite sure what I want. Life is so
dull! That is what ails me, I think."

I looked at her in uncertainty as to her mood, but she left me in doubt,
and began telling me about society at the Point, her friend Mrs.
Woodruff, and the houseful of guests. She told me stories with some
scandalous flavor about them, enough to give them a zest; she mimicked
all the earnest people and spoke with contempt of all the shallow ones;
she appeared to have fathomed all the petty under-currents which
influenced people's actions, detected every shade of pretension and
studied all the affectations and habits of the men and women she saw
intimately. All this, too, without betraying any personal liking for one
of them, and seeming to regard them all as mere puppets, to some of whom
she attached herself when there was anything to gain, and from whom she
withdrew herself when there was anything to lose. But she was too clever
to allow me time to think what qualities of mind and heart lay behind
this philosophy, and I was very much diverted.

"I must take you to see Mrs. Woodruff," she remarked. "You will be
welcome in the set as flowers in May. You are spending the summer here,
I suppose?"

"I have no plans. Where my mother is I shall be for the present, I have
been separated from her so long."

"How beautiful! But about your future, Floyd? Have you a career decided
upon, or are you to be a gentleman of leisure?"

I flushed: "My resolution is not taken as to what I shall be--certainly
not an idle man."

"I can tell your fortune," she said in a low voice. "You need not cross
my palm with silver for it, either."

"With gold, then?"

"I will tell it for love, but it is a golden fortune. You will marry
H