made friends with Mrs. Wilbur, who finds her old-fashioned
simplicity charming. She helps to receive the new guests, not as much
startled by Miss Dayre as she would have been six months ago. The world
is so different outside of convent walls that it seems sometimes as if
she were in a play, acting a part.

In the midst of this Floyd Grandon arrives. Cecil captures him in
wildest delight. Violet is glad to meet him first before all these
people; alas for love when it longs for no secrecy! She colors and a
sweet light glows in her face, she cannot unlearn her lesson all at
once. Then she is quiet, lady-like, composed. Floyd watches her with a
curious sensation. It is a new air of being mistress, of having a
responsibility.

There certainly is a very gay week at Grandon Park. Bertie Dayre stirs
people into exciting life. She is vivacious, exuberant, has wonderful
vitality, and is never still a moment. Eugene has no need to devote
himself to Miss Brade, he cannot even attend to Miss Bertie's pressing
needs, and Floyd is called in to fill empty spaces. All men seem
created with a manifest purpose of adding to her steady enjoyment.

"I think you were very short-sighted to marry so young," says Miss
Dayre, calmly, to Violet, as they are driving out one morning. "What
kind of a life are you going to have? It seems almost as if your
greatest duty was to be a sort of nursery governess to the child, who
is a marvel of beauty. How extremely fond her father is of her! Now _I_
should be jealous."

She utters this with a calm assumption of authority bordering on
experience. Indeed, Bertie Dayre impresses you with the certainty that
she _does_ know a great deal, the outcome of her confident belief in
her own shrewd, far-sighted eyes.

"But _I_ love Cecil very much," returns Violet, so earnestly that
Bertie stares.

"There are some women to whom children are more than the husband,"
announces this wise young woman. "I should want to have the highest
regard for my husband. In fact, I mean never to marry until I can find
a soul the exact counterpart of mine. Marriages are too hurried,--too
many minor considerations are taken into account, home, money,
position, protection, and all that,--but I suppose every girl cannot
order her own life. I shall be able to."

Violet smiles dreamily, yet there is infinite sadness in it. If she
could have ordered her life, she would have married Floyd Grandon and
made the same mistake fate has mad