it is not hard to
see what might happen. But she is a great belle and a coquette too,
I should imagine, and she has a large enough following to turn any
girl's head. I don't wonder at it either, for she is the most lovely
creature I ever saw, and yet she doesn't make a pleasant impression
on me. The men are just wild about her. Mr. Muir looks askance at
Graydon's devotion, and mutters 'speculator' when Miss Wildmere's name
is mentioned. Graydon returns to Europe next week. He inquires often
after you, and his questions make me feel that I don't know as much
about you and what you are doing as I should. You write often, but
somehow you seem remote in more senses than one. I suppose, however,
you are reading as usual, and just floating along down stream with
time. Well, no matter, dear. You write that you are better and
stronger, and have no more of your old dreadful colds. You must spend
next summer with us, even if you have to go back to Santa Barbara in
the winter."

Neither the shortness of his visit nor the fascinations of Miss
Wildmere prevented Graydon from writing Madge a cordial note full
of regret that he should not see her. "You have indeed," he wrote,
"vanished like a ghost, and become but a haunting memory. It is a year
and a half since I have seen you, and I did not succeed in beguiling
you into a correspondence. Like the good Indians, you have followed
the setting sun into some region as vague and distant as the 'happy
hunting-ground.' Mary says that you will come East next summer. The
idea! Is there anything of you to come that is corporate and real? If
I had the time I would go to you and see. I find Miss Wildmere just
about where I left her, only more beautiful and fascinating, and
besieged by a host. Absence makes my chance slight indeed, but I do
not despair. She so evidently enjoys a defensive warfare, wherein it
is the besiegers who capitulate, that she may maintain it until
my exile abroad is over. This is to my mind a more rational
interpretation of her freedom than that she is waiting for me; and
thus I reveal to you that modesty is my most prominent trait. She may
be married before I see her again; and should this prove to be the
case I will show you what a model of heroic equanimity I can be."

Madge read this letter with a sigh of intense relief, and was not long
in resolving that when he came again she would enter the lists with
Miss Wildmere and do what her nature permitted before her chanc