fate to become Mrs. Delancy.

Some one invites them within.

"Oh, no," responds the professor. "Mrs. Grandon knows what is
delightful; let us follow her example and sit here on the porch. You
Americans are indoors quite too much. And I want to see the child, Mr.
Grandon's pretty daughter."

"I must be excused then," declares Laura. "They may entertain you,
Arthur, but I must see mamma and take off my bonnet."

The others seat themselves in the bamboo veranda chairs. Cecil is
seized with a fit of shyness, which proves coaxable, however. Violet
feels compelled, as sole lady, to be entertaining, and acquits herself
so well that in a few moments her husband forgets his recent anxiety
about her.

Laura follows her mother up-stairs.

"What did possess Floyd to make such an utter fool of himself?" she
asks. "When you wrote, I was struck dumb! That little--ninny!"

"You have just hit it. A girl who still plays with dolls, and who
learned nothing in a convent but to count beads and embroider trumpery
lace," says the mother, contemptuously.

"And he might have had Madame Lepelletier! She has been _such_ a
success at Newport, and she will be just the envy of New York this
winter! She is going to take a furnished house,--the Ascotts'. They are
to spend the winter in Paris, and Mrs. Latimer says the house is lovely
as an Eastern dream. I never _can_ forgive him. And he offered her to
Eugene."

"Offered her to Eugene!" repeats the mother.

"Yes. He had hardly reached Lake George when the Grand Seigneur
insisted upon his coming back and espousing Miss St. Vincent,--very
Frenchy, was it not? But Eugene did not mean to be burdened with a dead
weight all his life. We have had enough botherment with that miserable
patent, not to have a beggarly girl thrust upon us!"

Mrs. Grandon is struck dumb now. Eugene has missed a fortune. Why does
everything drop into Floyd's hands?

"I don't know about that," she answers. "It is a wretched choice for
Floyd; she is a mere child compared to him, and she would have done
better for Eugene. The patent is likely to prove a success; in that
case the St. Vincent fortune is not to be despised."

"O mamma, Mr. Wilmarth assured Eugene that Floyd never _could_ get back
the money he was sinking in it. He _must_ know. You do not suppose
Floyd was counting on _that_ chance, do you?"

"I don't know what he was counting on," says the mother, angrily; "only
he seems to take the best of everything."