nd he laughed
at her appetite, which made her laugh, too, only she pretended
not to like it.

At the porch she left him to change her gown, and slipped away
up-stairs, while he found old Pierre and was dusted and fussed
over until he couldn't stand it another moment. Luckily he heard
Lorraine calling her maid on the porch, and he went to her at
once.

"Papa says you may lunch here--I spoke to him through the
key-hole. It is all ready; will you come?"

A serious-minded maid served them with salad and thin
bread-and-butter.

"Tea!" exclaimed Jack.

"Isn't that very American?" asked Lorraine, timidly. "I thought
you might like it; I understood that all Americans drank tea."

"They do," he said, gravely; "it is a terrible habit--a national
vice--but they do."

"Now you are laughing at me!" she cried. "Marianne, please to
remove that tea! No, no, I won't leave it--and you can suffer if
you wish. And to think that I--"

They were both laughing so that the maid's face grew more
serious, and she removed the teapot as though she were bearing
some strange and poisonous creature to a deserved doom.

As they sat opposite each other, smiling, a little flurried at
finding themselves alone at table together, but eating with the
appetites of very young lovers, the warm summer wind, blowing
through the open windows, bore to their ears the songs of forest
birds. It bore another sound, too; Jack had heard it for the last
two hours, or had imagined he heard it--a low, monotonous
vibration, now almost distinct, now lost, now again discernible,
but too vague, too indefinite to be anything but that faint
summer harmony which comes from distant breezes, distant
movements, mingling with the stir of drowsy field insects, half
torpid in the heat of noon.

Still it was always there; and now, turning his ear to the
window, he laid down knife and fork to listen.

"I have also noticed it," said Lorraine, answering his unasked
question.

"Do you hear it now?"

"Yes--more distinctly now."

A few moments later Jack leaned back in his chair and listened
again.

"Yes," said Lorraine, "it seems to come nearer. What is it?"

"It comes from the southeast. I don't know," he answered.

They rose and walked to the window. She was so near that he
breathed the subtle fragrance of her hair, the fresh sweetness of
her white gown, that rustled beside him.

"Hark!" whispered Lorraine; "I can almost hear voices in the
breezes--the murmur o