ut
her, a jaunty sailor hat on her crushed dark curls, and a cluster of
pink roses in her belt.

"She's very pretty, and all that," pursued this youthful philosopher and
cynic, looking at her with dispassionate eyes, "but is the game worth
the candle? Three weeks and two days, and I'm sick and tired to death of
this place, and--alas! my pretty Norry--of you! 'Men were deceivers
ever.' I suppose it was much the same in old Shakspeare's time as it is
now. It is all very well to pay off Gilbert, and wipe out the old
scores, but it is not at all very well to be disinherited by old Darcy.
If it comes to his ears it's all up with my chance of the inheritance,
and my marriage with Helen. And, upon my word, I shouldn't like to lose
Helen. She's good-looking, she's good style, she can talk on any
subject under Heaven, and she's twenty thousand dollars down on her
wedding-day. Yes, it will never do to throw up my chances there, but how
to drop quietly out of this--that's the rub. There'll be the dickens to
pay with Norine, and sometimes I've thought of late, gentle as she is,
much as she loves me--and she does love me, poor little soul--that she's
not one of the milk-and-water sort to sit down in a corner and break her
heart quietly. I wish--I wish--I wish I had left her in peace at Kent
Farm!"

She was beckoning to him gaily at that moment. He shook off his
disagreeable meditation, put his long limbs down off the sofa, took his
straw hat, and sauntered forth to join her.

The little house--Sea View Cottage, its romantic mistress had named it,
was owned by the two Miss Waddles. The two Miss Waddles were two old
maids. Miss Waddle the elder, taught school in Chelsea. Miss Waddle, the
younger, was literary, and wrote sensation stories for the weekly
papers, poor thing. In addition, they eked out their income by taking a
couple of summer boarders, for people as a rule don't become
millionaires teaching school or writing for the papers. Miss Waddle, the
younger, immersed in ink and romance, looked after the young man with
eyes of keen professional interest.

"How grumpy he looks," thought Miss Waddle; "how radiant _she_ looks.
He's tired to death of it all already; she's more and more in love with
him every day. The first week he was all devotion, the second week the
thermometer fell ten degrees, the third week he took to going to Boston
and coming home in the small hours, smelling of smoke and liquor, this
fourth he yawns in he