at
Boston, and which he now perceived had kept it, under whatever erring
impressions, ever since.

"I think we have met before, Miss Axewright," he said boldly, and he had
the pleasure of seeing her pensive little visage light up with a
responsive humor.

"I think we have," she replied; and Miss Desmond, whose habitual state
seemed to be intense inattention to whatever directly addressed itself
to her, cut in with the cry:

"You have met _before_!"

"Yes. Two weeks ago, in Boston," said Gaites. "Miss Axewright and I
stopped at the S. B. & H. C. freight-depot to see that your piano
started off all right."

He explained himself further, and, "Well, I don't see what you did to
it," Miss Desmond pouted. "It just got here this afternoon."

"Probably they 'throwed a spell' on it, as the country people say,"
suggested the master of ceremonies. "But all's well that end's well. The
great thing is to have your piano, Miss Phyllis. I'm coming up to-morrow
morning to see if it's got here in good condition."

"That's _some_ compensation," said the girl ironically; and she added,
with the kind of repellent lure with which women know how to leave men
the responsibility of any reciprocal approach, "I don't know whether it
won't need tuning first."

"Well, I'm a piano-tunist myself," the young fellow retorted, and their
banter took a course that left Miss Axewright and Gaites to themselves.
The dancers began to stray in again from the stairways and verandas.

"Dear me!" said Miss Desmond, "it's time already;" and as she dropped
upon the piano-stool she called to Miss Axewright with an authority of
tone which Gaites thought augured well for her success as a teacher,
"Millicent!"

VIII.

The next morning when Gaites came down to breakfast he had a question
which solved itself contrary to his preference as he entered the
dining-room. He was so early that the head waiter had to jump from his
own unfinished meal, and run to pull out his chair; and Gaites saw that
he left at his table the landlord's family, the clerk, the housekeeper,
and Miss Axewright. It appeared that she was not only staying in the
hotel, but was there on terms which indeed held her above the servants,
but separated her from the guests.

He hardly knew how to dissemble the feeling of humiliation mixed with
indignation which flashed up in him, and which, he was afterwards
afraid, must have made him seem rather curt in his response to the head
waiter's c