"Is there any one you would like to ask here?" He thinks of madame,--she
would be a delightful summer guest. He would like to open his house, he
does owe something to society for its warm welcome to him.

"I don't really know any one but Mrs. Latimer. Oh," she says, with a
bright ring in her voice, "how nice it would be to have them both, and
the children! Would your mother mind very much, I wonder?"

"It need be no trouble to her," he says, almost coldly, "and _you_ are
to have your wishes gratified in your _own_ house."

She cannot get over the feeling that she is merely on sufferance. As
the time goes on she understands the situation more clearly. Mrs.
Grandon does not like to have her Floyd's wife, and she _would_ like
Madame Lepelletier in the place. But how strange that no one seems to
remember the old time when she jilted him, as Marcia says.

"But all that will be so much nicer in the summer," he goes on,
reflectively. "The children can run out of doors. Yes, we will have the
Latimers and any one else we choose, and be really like civilized
people. I hope Gertrude can get back."

"Oh, I do hope so!" she re-echoes.

The next morning he takes Violet and Cecil out for a long drive, way up
the river. It is the last day of March, and there is a softness in the
air, a bluish mist over the river, and a tender gray green on the
hillsides. The very crags seem less rugged and frowning. It is really
spring!

"Oh, how delightful it will be!" she exclaims. "Are there not wild
flowers about here? We can have some lovely rambles gathering them. And
there will be the gardens, and the whole world growing lovelier every
day."

They stop at a hotel and have a dinner, which they enjoy with the
appetites of travellers. Just above there is a pretty waterfall, much
swollen by the spring rains, then there is a high rock with a legend,
one of the numerous "Lover's Leap," but the prospect from its top is
superb, so they climb up and view the undulating country, the blue,
winding river, the nooks and crags, dotted here and there by cottages
that seem to hang on their sides, a slow team jogging round, or fields
being ploughed. All the air is sweet with pine and spruce, and that
indescribable fragrance of spring.

Floyd Grandon is so happy to-day that he almost wishes he had a little
world of his own, with just Violet and Cecil. If it were not for this
wretched business; but then he is likely to get it off his hands some
time,