d waited for an envelope he glanced
about the embowered shop, and his eye lit on a cluster of yellow roses.
He had never seen any as sun-golden before, and his first impulse was
to send them to May instead of the lilies. But they did not look like
her--there was something too rich, too strong, in their fiery beauty.
In a sudden revulsion of mood, and almost without knowing what he did,
he signed to the florist to lay the roses in another long box, and
slipped his card into a second envelope, on which he wrote the name of
the Countess Olenska; then, just as he was turning away, he drew the
card out again, and left the empty envelope on the box.

"They'll go at once?" he enquired, pointing to the roses.

The florist assured him that they would.

X.

The next day he persuaded May to escape for a walk in the Park after
luncheon. As was the custom in old-fashioned Episcopalian New York,
she usually accompanied her parents to church on Sunday afternoons; but
Mrs. Welland condoned her truancy, having that very morning won her
over to the necessity of a long engagement, with time to prepare a
hand-embroidered trousseau containing the proper number of dozens.

The day was delectable. The bare vaulting of trees along the Mall was
ceiled with lapis lazuli, and arched above snow that shone like
splintered crystals. It was the weather to call out May's radiance,
and she burned like a young maple in the frost. Archer was proud of
the glances turned on her, and the simple joy of possessorship cleared
away his underlying perplexities.

"It's so delicious--waking every morning to smell lilies-of-the-valley
in one's room!" she said.

"Yesterday they came late. I hadn't time in the morning--"

"But your remembering each day to send them makes me love them so much
more than if you'd given a standing order, and they came every morning
on the minute, like one's music-teacher--as I know Gertrude Lefferts's
did, for instance, when she and Lawrence were engaged."

"Ah--they would!" laughed Archer, amused at her keenness. He looked
sideways at her fruit-like cheek and felt rich and secure enough to
add: "When I sent your lilies yesterday afternoon I saw some rather
gorgeous yellow roses and packed them off to Madame Olenska. Was that
right?"

"How dear of you! Anything of that kind delights her. It's odd she
didn't mention it: she lunched with us today, and spoke of Mr.
Beaufort's having sent her wonderful orchids, and