under the amused
scrutiny of his mother-confessor. "Consider, if you please, my dear
madam, that this is the first offer I have ever received, and I was
naturally somewhat awkward about declining it. We shall learn better
manners as we go along."

"You did decline, then?" said Mrs. Belding, easily persuaded of the
substantial truth of the story, and naturally inclined, as is the way
of woman, to the man's side. Then, laughing at Arthur's discomfiture,
she added, "I was about to congratulate you."

"I deserve only your commiseration."

"I must look about and dispose of you in some way. You are evidently
too rich and too fascinating. But I came over to-day to ask you what I
ought to do about my Lake View farm. I have two offers for it; if I had
but one, I would take either--well, you know what I mean;" and the
conversation became practical. After that matter was disposed of, she
said, with a keen side-glance at Farnham, "That was a very pretty girl.
I hope you will not be exposed to such another attack; I might not be
so near the next time."

"That danger, thanks to you, is over; Mademoiselle will never return,"
he answered, with an air of conviction.

Mrs. Belding went home with no impression left of the scene she had
witnessed but one of amusement. She thought of it only as "a good joke
on Arthur Farnham." She kept chuckling to herself over it all day, and
if she had had any especial gossip in the town, she would have put on
her hat and hurried off to tell it. But she was a woman who lived very
much at home, and, in fact, cared little for tattling. She was several
times on the point of sharing the fun of it with her daughter, but was
prevented by an instinctive feeling that it was hardly the sort of
story to tell a young girl about a personal acquaintance. So she
restrained herself, though the solitary enjoyment of it irritated her.

They were sitting on the wide porch which ran around two sides of the
house just as twilight was falling. The air was full of drowsy calls
and twitters from the grass and the trees. The two ladies had been
sitting ever since dinner, enjoying the warm air of the early summer,
talking very little, and dropping often into long and contented
silences. Mrs. Belding had condescended to grenadine in consideration
of the weather, and so looked less funereal than usual. Alice was
dressed in a soft and vapory fabric of creamy bunting, in the midst of
which her long figure lay reclined in an e