recollection
kindling in his gay eyes. "We had a good time. Maynard was along: he's a
first-rate fellow. I wish he were here."

"Yes," said Grace, "I wish so, too." She did not know what to make
of this frankness of the young man's, and she did not know whether
to consider him very depraved or very innocent. In her question she
continued to stare at him, without being aware of the embarrassment to
which she was putting him.

"I heard of Mrs. Maynard's being here, and I thought I should find him,
too. I came over yesterday to get him to go into the woods with us."

Grace decided that this was mere effrontery. "It is a pity that he is
not here," she said; and though it ought to have been possible for her
to go on and rebuke the young fellow for bestowing upon Mrs. Maynard the
comradeship intended for her husband, it was not so. She could only look
severely at him, and trust that he might conceive the intention which
she could not express. She rebelled against the convention and against
her own weakness, which would not let her boldly interfere in what she
believed a wrong; she had defied society, in the mass, but here, with
this man, whom as an atom of the mass she would have despised, she was
powerless.

"Have you ever seen him?" Libby asked, perhaps clinging to Maynard
because he was a topic of conversation in default of which there might
be nothing to say.

"No," answered Grace.

"He 's funny. He's got lots of that Western humor, and he tells a story
better than any man I ever saw. There was one story of his"--

"I have no sense of humor," interrupted Grace impatiently. "Mr. Libby,"
she broke out, "I 'm sorry that you've asked Mrs. Maynard to take a sail
with you. The sea air"--she reddened with the shame of not being able to
proceed without this wretched subterfuge--"won't do her any good."

"Then," said the young man, "you must n't let her go."

"I don't choose to forbid her," Grace began.

"I beg your pardon," he broke in. "I'll be back in a moment."

He turned, and ran to the edge of the cliff, over which he vanished, and
he did not reappear till Mrs. Maynard had rejoined Grace on the piazza.

"I hope you won't mind its being a little rough, Mrs. Maynard," he said,
breathing quickly. "Adams thinks we're going to have it pretty fresh
before we get back."

"Indeed, I don't want to go, then!" cried Mrs. Maynard, in petulant
disappointment, letting her wraps fall upon a chair.

Mr. Libby looked at Grac