go to Newport.
Marion is going to spend the summer with Christine Drayton, you know,
and Papa does not intend to leave the city, so we can persuade him that
it is our duty to seize such a golden opportunity of doing things
economically. I am sure I don't know what people must think of us, never
going to any of the fashionable places. For my part I think we owe it to
Papa's position to keep up with the world."

"I believe it might be managed," said Mrs. Hildreth after some
consideration. "It was very clever of you to think of it, Isabelle. You
ought to be a diplomat, my dear," and she smiled approvingly on her
daughter.

* * * * *

The train swept along through the picturesque Vermont scenery and Evadne
looked out of her window with never ending delight.

"I am like a poor, lonely bird," she said to herself, "who flits from
shore to shore, seeking rest and finding none. Another journey in the
dark! I wonder what will be at the end of this one? Well, I'll hope for
the best. Aunt Marthe's letter was kind, and her name sounds as cheery
as Aunt Kate's sounds cold."

Mr. Everidge came to meet her as the train steamed into the little
station, and Evadne soon found herself seated in a comfortable carriage
behind a handsome chestnut mare, bowling along a fragrant country road,
catching glimpses at every turn of the verdure-clad hills.

She found her new uncle very pleasant. There was a silver-tongued
suavity about him in striking contrast to the growing preoccupation of
Judge Hildreth, and a sort of airy self complaisance which took it for
granted that he should be well treated by the world.

"I am very glad you have come, my dear niece," he said, "to relieve the
tedium of our uneventful existence. You must let our Vermont air kiss
the roses into bloom again in your pale cheeks. It has a world-wide
reputation as a tonic. I hope you left our Marlborough relatives in a
pleasant attitude of mind? It is one of the evidences of this
progressive age that you should woo 'tired Nature's sweet restorer' one
night under the roof of my respected brother-in-law, the next under my
own. The ancients, with their primitive modes of laborious transit, were
only half alive. We of to-day, thanks to the melodious tea-kettle and
inventive cerebral tissue of the youthful Watt, live in a perpetual
hand-clasp, so to speak, and, by means of the flashing chain of light
which girdles the globe are kept in touch with