odness to remember there were more in the
family. Mrs. Grandon and myself," declares Eugene, almost in a tone of
vexation.

"What was the opera? I think you _are_ getting very----"

"'Martha,'" he interrupts, quickly. "An acquaintance of madame's sang
as _Plunkett_, and did extremely well; a young Italian who only a year
or two ago lost his fortune."

"Brignoli used to be divine as _Lionel_," says Marcia. "I don't believe
I should like another person in that _role_. Of course madame is making
a great sensation in New York. What a wonderfully handsome woman she
is, and--do you remember, Gertrude, whether any one ever made any great
fuss about her in her youth?"

Gertrude colors at this thrust of ancient memory.

"She is the handsomest woman I ever saw," begins Eugene, and his glance
falls upon Violet. "Of course she was handsome always, and you need not
hint enviously of a lost youth, Marcia. She looks younger than any of
you girls to-day. There wasn't one at Newport who could hold a candle
to her. The men were mowed down 'n swaths. Not one could stand before
her."

"Then _I_ say she is a coquette," is Marcia's decisive reply. "I dare
say there will be no end of dinners and Germans and lovers. It's
fearfully mean in Laura not to take a house for the winter and invite a
body down. It is horrid dull here! Floyd, do _you_ mean to stay up all
winter?"

"Why not? I have not spent a winter here since I was a boy, in the old
farm-house with Aunt Marcia."

"What an awful place it was!" Marcia is quite forgetting her _role_ of
severe high art. "I believe she always chose the coldest days in winter
and the warmest days in summer to invite us. I don't see how you
endured it!"

"I not only endured it," says Floyd, meditatively, "but I liked it."

"Well, one _might_ like it with a fortune in the background," Eugene
rejoins, with covert insolence.

The dessert is being brought in, which causes a lull in the family
strictures. Floyd frowns and is silent. When they rise, Cecil runs to
the drawing-room, and the two follow her.

"Play a little," says her husband; and Violet sits down, thinking of
the handsome woman she has never yet seen, but who seems to have
bewitched all the family.

Floyd is down twice again before the day on which he escorts his mother
home. On one of these occasions he buys the pony. Violet and Cecil are
both filled with delight, and Floyd gives his wife a little driving
practice. He is so good to