women go anywhere."

"But if you only would!" beseechingly. "And you have never seen the
cottage. Oh, please do!" And she kneels down, taking the nerveless
hands in hers.

Gertrude considers. She hates to be disturbed, but her book is
unusually stupid, and Violet's eager, winsome face is irresistible. How
can they say she is not pretty? And if there is the slightest question
they will find no end of fault. She groans.

"I know it is asking a good deal, but it would make me so happy, so
comfortable."

"And you are such a dear little thing!"

"Do you really think so? Oh, if you could care about me," and the
entreaty in the voice touches the heart of the elder as nothing has in
a long while.

"I will go," returns Gertrude, with unwonted decision. "I will be quick
about changing my dress. There is the carriage."

Gertrude is not much improved by her mourning. She looks less deathly
and washed out in the soft white gowns, but there is a languid grace
about her that, after all, moves the professor's sympathy. "It is a
better face than the other one," he thinks; "not so silly and
self-sufficient." He is ever entertaining, unless deeply preoccupied,
and now he addresses most of his conversation to her, and is friendly
solicitous about her comfort and her health. "There are such delightful
baths in Germany. Is there nothing like them in America?" he asks.

"They are really so," Gertrude answers. "We were in Germany once, when
my health first began to break."

"In Germany?" With that he brightens up and questions her, and Violet
is pleased that she answers with interest. She so pities poor Gertrude,
with her broken-off love story, and she helps the conversation with now
and then a trenchant bit of her own that does not lead it away. She is
so generous in this respect. She has not come to the time of life when
one wishes to amass, or is it that she has not seen anything she
covets?

The professor is satisfied with every room. If they can put in a bed he
will sleep here, and take this for his workroom. The parlor is still
left for the entertainment of guests. Here is a porch and a rather
steep flight of steps, where he can run up and down when he wants a
whiff of the cool river breeze or a stroll along the shore. Violet
explains to Denise that Prof. Freilgrath will want some meals. "You
know all about those odd foreign soups and dishes," she says, with her
pretty air. "And I shall come over every day to write or to rea