repairing his
injuries as yourself," said King.

"Thank you; I'm not used to such delicate elephantine compliments. It is
just like a man, Miss Benson, to try to kill two birds with one stone
--get rid of a rival by sacrificing a useless friend. All the same, au
revoir."

"We shall be glad to see you," replied Irene, "you know that, wherever we
are; and we will try to make the North tolerable for you."

"Oh, I shall hide my pride and go. If you were not all so rich up there!
Not that I object to wealth; I enjoy it. I think I shall take to that
old prayer: 'May my lot be with the rich in this world, and with the
South in the next!'"

I suppose there never was such a journey as that from the White Sulphur
to New York. If the Virginia scenery had seemed to King beautiful when
he came down, it was now transcendently lovely. He raved about it, when
I saw him afterwards--the Blue Ridge, the wheat valleys, the commercial
advantages, the mineral resources of the State, the grand old traditional
Heaven knows what of the Old Dominion; as to details he was obscure, and
when I pinned him down, he was not certain which route they took. It is
my opinion that the most costly scenery in the world is thrown away upon
a pair of newly plighted lovers.

The rest of the party were in good spirits. Even Mrs. Benson, who was at
first a little bewildered at the failure of her admirably planned
campaign, accepted the situation with serenity.

"So you are engaged!" she said, when Irene went to her with the story of
the little affair in Lovers' Walk. "I suppose he'll like it. He always
took a fancy to Mr. King. No, I haven't any objections, Irene, and I
hope you'll be happy. Mr. King was always very polite to me--only he
didn't never seem exactly like our folks. We only want you to be happy."
And the old lady declared with a shaky voice, and tears streaming down
her cheeks, that she was perfectly happy if Irene was.

Mr. Meigs, the refined, the fastidious, the man of the world, who had
known how to adapt himself perfectly to Mrs. Benson, might nevertheless
have been surprised at her implication that he was "like our folks."

At the station in Jersey City--a place suggestive of love and romance and
full of tender associations--the party separated for a few days, the
Bensons going to Saratoga, and King accompanying Forbes to Long Branch,
in pursuance of an agreement which, not being in writing, he was unable
to break. As the two friends we