he asks, with wide-open eyes.

"How would you like to go there? to sail in a great ship again?"

"With madame?" she questions, laconically.

The color mounts his brow. "No," he replies, gravely, "with papa."

"And mamma?"

"What if mamma does not want to go?"

The lovely face grows serious and the eyes droop, as she answers
slowly,--

"Then I should stay with mamma. She would have no one."

"But I would have no one either," he says, jealously.

"Then why do you not stay with mamma? She cries sometimes," and Cecil's
voice has a touch of pitiful awe. "Why do you not put roses in her hair
and kiss her as Uncle Eugene does Polly? She is sweetest."

"When does she cry?" he asks, smitten to the heart.

"At night, when it is all soft dark, and when she puts her face down on
my pillow."

"Take your flowers in to them," he cries, suddenly. Is it because any
love has gone out of Violet's life that she weeps in the soft dark? He
strides up and down with his blood at fever heat. Is it for Eugene? The
idea maddens him!

When he enters the room, Violet has the red rose at her throat. He sits
down by her and finds her grave, composed. No lovely warm color
flutters over her face. She has trained herself so well that she can
even raise her eyes without any show of embarrassment. Her exquisite
repose would rival madame's; indeed, she might almost be a statue with
fine, clear complexion, proudly curved lips, and long-fringed lids that
make a glitter of bronze on her rose-leaf cheek. How has this girl of
eighteen achieved this passionless grace?

As the night sets in the rain pours in torrents. There is dinner,
music, and Cecil makes various diversions up and down the room. Eugene
and Polly make love in their usual piquant fashion in dim obscurity, he
audaciously stealing kisses under cover, for no earthly reason except
that stolen kisses have a more delicious flavor.

Violet goes up-stairs with Cecil; for though Jane is equal to toilet
purposes, there is a certain seductive way of tucking up and smoothing
pillows, of stories and good-nights in which Violet is unsurpassed.

"Come down in the library after you are through," Grandon says. "I want
to see you." He wonders if people can divine what is in each other's
soul unless eyes and lips confess it. Intuition, forsooth!

She finds the room in a soft glow from the large lamp on the library
table. Mr. Grandon is seated on one end of the divan, pushed a trifle
from the wi