place in Miss
Trotter. Always scrupulously correct, and even severe in her dress, she
allowed herself certain privileges of color, style, and material. She,
who had always affected dark shades and stiff white cuffs and collars,
came out in delicate tints and laces, which lent a brilliancy to her
dark eyes and short crisp black curls, slightly tinged with gray.
One warm summer evening she startled every one by appearing in white,
possibly a reminiscence of her youth at the Vermont academy. The
masculine guests thought it pretty and attractive; even the women
forgave her what they believed a natural expression of her prosperity
and new condition, but regretted a taste so inconsistent with her age.
For all that, Miss Trotter had never looked so charming, and the faint
autumnal glow in her face made no one regret her passing summer.

One evening she found Chris so much better that he was sitting on
the balcony, but still so depressed that she was compelled so far to
overcome the singular timidity she had felt in his presence as to ask
him to come into her own little drawing-room, ostensibly to avoid the
cool night air. It was the former "card-room" of the hotel, but now
fitted with feminine taste and prettiness. She arranged a seat for him
on the sofa, which he took with a certain brusque boyish surliness, the
last vestige of his youth.

"It's very kind of you to invite me in here," he began bitterly, "when
you are so run after by every one, and to leave Judge Fletcher just
now to talk to me, but I suppose you are simply pitying me for being a
fool!"

"I thought you were imprudent in exposing yourself to the night air on
the balcony, and I think Judge Fletcher is old enough to take care of
himself," she returned, with the faintest touch of coquetry, and a smile
which was quite as much an amused recognition of that quality in herself
as anything else.

"And I'm a baby who can't," he said angrily. After a pause he burst out
abruptly: "Miss Trotter, will you answer me one question?"

"Go on," she said smilingly.

"Did you know--that--woman was engaged to Bilson when I spoke to you in
the wood?"

"No!" she answered quickly, but without the sharp resentment she had
shown at his brother's suggestion. "I only knew it when Mr. Bilson told
me the same evening."

"And I only knew it when news came of their marriage," he said bitterly.

"But you must have suspected something when you saw them together in the
wood," she res