A week went by, a week of mingled delight and torture for Nina. She had never, outside novels, participated in entertainments as fine as those to which she was taken. The theatre was a revelation, the shops a long drawn out pleasure, and calls, tea-drinkings, dinner-parties, and drives into the country kept her in an almost continual state of enchanted and suppressed enjoyment. But yet she was not perfectly happy. Her pleasant hours were interspersed with melancholy ones. One day Lady Forrest, casting down her mouse-coloured eyes in her unobtrusive fashion, murmured, “I think I will give a dinner-party the day after to-morrow, my dear. A young man of very distinguished family for whom my husband has been investing money is in the city. Would you like me to invite your husband? It will be quite a small affair.”

Nina’s heart leaped for joy; but she merely said, “Thank you, Lady Forrest, I wish you would ask him to come.”

Two evenings later she flung open her wardrobe, dismissed the maid Lady Forrest had sent to help her dress, and threw every gown she possessed on the bed. Which should it be? There was a great deal in dress, these Englishwomen told her. A becoming gown had been known to decide the fate of a kingdom. What about that pretty green thing that ’Steban had bought for her in Boston? The lace frills were certainly becoming. She tried it on, then dashed it on a chair. Fie! the trying thing! She looked positively hideous. Well, there was a dove-coloured silk open at the throat. It would be a crime to put on a high-necked dress in this household; though it was a fortunate thing that Mamma Danvers could not see her. She would be shocked to death.

In half an hour she was red in the face, her teeth were worrying her under lip, and she was half-crying from vexation. Nothing suited her, nothing fitted. Everything was trying to her complexion, rasping to her nerves.

The maid knocked at her door, and she irritably called, “Come in.”

“I would better assist you, ma’am,” the newcomer observed, civilly; “dinner will be served in ten minutes. Lady Forrest has long since gone down.”

“Put on that,” said Nina, desperately, and she indicated a sprigged and washed white muslin frock.

“That, ma’am?” said the woman, in faint surprise.

“Yes,” said the girl, choking back a sigh. “It is a Rubicon Meadows frock,—the place I come from. My husband is coming. I think he would like to see me in it.”

“Would you just try this, ma’am, first,” and the woman laid her hand on a white silk production of an American dressmaker’s skill.

“That! it is too plain and it makes me tall and hideous and like a ghost!” exclaimed the girl.

“Will you just try it?” coaxed the woman. “Your colour is rising.”

Nina’s refractoriness ceased, and she resignedly bent her head. In a trice the woman’s deft fingers had fastened the gown in the back, arranged the chiffon, bib-like draperies in front, and straightened out the folds of the soft, clinging skirt.

“Now your slippers, ma’am,” and she deftly clasped them on Nina’s tiny feet. “And just one look in the mirror,” and she turned a watchful eye toward the clock.

“All in white,” and Nina slowly twirled before her cheval-glass. “It is not as bad as I thought it would be.”

The woman discreetly held her peace, and began tidying the room. The girl, ordinarily only pretty, was a beauty this evening. Something had animated her, and made her cheeks burn and her eyes glow. Now she was running back. What had she forgotten—her handkerchief? and the maid hastily opened a drawer.

No, not a handkerchief, for she was waving a morsel of lace in her hand. “I want to thank you for helping me dress, Mrs. Morris,” she said, graciously.

“Beg pardon, ma’am, but you’ll be late if you don’t go down,” said the woman, who, as a well-trained English domestic, knew better than to allow this youthful American married lady to beguile her into any familiarity with her superiors.

However, she was secretly gratified by the flattering prefix tacked to her usually abbreviated name, and she slipped into the hall to see the young American lady enter the drawing-room.

She was shaking hands in the hall with a rather stout, thick-set man of middle age,—a dark, reserved-looking man who must be her husband. “A wonder he does not kiss her,” soliloquised the woman, “since they are alone.”But he did not kiss her, and the girl hurriedly preceded him into the drawing-room, from whence Morris presently saw the company come arm in arm on their way to the dining-room.

Mrs. Fordyce was not with her husband. She was escorted by a barrister well-known to the house. The guest of honour, the honourable Arthur Gravesham, fourth son of the Earl of Greenfell, was in front with Lady Forrest. He was not much to look at, and with a yawn the woman went to her sewing. This was not a grand dinner-party. The gowns were not worth noticing, and as for that black-moustached husband of the girl she had just dressed, he was in an evening suit at least three years old in cut. No gentleman wore lapels of that shape now.

Nina’s head was swimming, yet outwardly she was an iceberg. She wondered whether her husband was admiring her. Did he see how quickly and how completely she had acquired the reserved, distinguished air of the Englishwomen about her? How little she spoke, and in what a low, sweet voice. How mincingly she ate, and with what tiny, tiny mouthfuls; and at dessert she would show him that she could quite well cut an apple with a knife and fork, instead of gnawing it with her pearly teeth.To her chagrin, he was not devouring her with his eyes. Something had happened. Something had come between them since they parted. He was not unkind nor unloving, he was simply absent-minded; and he was fighting against it with all his might; and she keenly watched him as he strove to throw off his burden of thought, whatever it was, and devote himself to the young lady that he had taken in to dinner.

She was an English girl, a neighbour of the Forrests, and Nina had had some previous acquaintance with her.

“’Steban calls me a doll,” she indignantly reflected; “the doll is beside him. I know more in ten minutes than that girl does in a year; and she is ten months older than I am. I guess she must have been brought up on pap. He seems to like to hear her talk. He is quite thawing. Yes, indeed, I admire the English climate immensely,” and she turned to the barrister who was addressing her. “It keeps one so interested. You never know what is going to happen. It is like the servant question in America. One discusses it all the time.”

There were no apples for dessert, and by the time the other fruit provided had reached the table, Nina was in a high state of irritation. She had an additional cause to bring it on; for, coupled with her husband’s neglect, was his strange indifference to an insult that was being offered him.

She, too, had noticed that his coat was not of the latest cut. Then he was neither a professional man nor a rich man; and the men surrounding them were either the one or the other, or both, or of aristocratic connection like Mr. Gravesham. With considerable keenness, and great personal displeasure, she had been ferreting into the question of class distinctions, hitherto an unknown subject to her. She hated the system. One person was as good as another in her estimation; and this talk of law, medicine, the army, and the church, as being the only walks in life for gentlemen, made her sick. Certainly these cold-hearted patricians about the table regarded her husband as lower in rank than themselves. They also had a well-bred way of observing her that she did not like. And her husband did not resent his supposed inferiority. It made her blood boil that he should be so meek. She wished that he would dash his napkin on the table, and rush from the house. And now some one was actually calling him by his last name. This was too much for flesh and blood to bear, and her bright eyes and sharp ears immediately went to locate the clear-spoken and oft-recurring “Fordyce!”

It was that odious son of an earl. He had engaged her husband in a discussion of some points connected with yachting. Well, she would give him a lesson; and she immediately lost her superb manner and became lively and animated.

Her neighbours regarded her with indulgence. She was an American girl, far more variable and vivacious than an English one. Far more entertaining, the young barrister confided to his inmost soul. If this dainty, laughing creature were not married, he himself might be tempted to try his luck. Might he—he would do nothing precipitately. But hold—what was the dainty creature saying?

She was addressing the Honourable Arthur Gravesham, actually addressing him across the table in a most familiar and disrespectful manner; and he held his breath to hear.

Nina’s exasperation had reached its last stage. She did not know that Mr. Gravesham had a fixed habit of mentioning the names of persons with whom he conversed; and that his satisfaction at finding her husband’s views with regard to the size and build of yachts entirely coincided with his own was exhibiting itself in a more and more frequent use of his name.Nina’s watchful eye never left him, and during one of the dignified pauses of his conversation she fixed him with a deceitfully gentle and supplicating stare, and said, distinctly, “Gravesham, please pass me the preserved ginger.”

The young barrister was not the only one whose attention turned in dismay upon her. Sir Hervey opened and shut his mouth like an overheated fish, and as for the Honourable Arthur Gravesham, he settled his glasses more firmly on the bridge of his aristocratic nose, and said, feebly, “I beg your pardon.”

“I said, Gravesham, please pass the preserved ginger,” she repeated, in a distinct voice, and allowing a mild and inquiring gaze to wander around the table as if to ask why all these people had suddenly become interested in her.

Only Lady Forrest was smiling her quiet smile as she watched her. Sir Hervey had become cool enough to gasp, in an explanatory way, “Hem—hem—Mrs. Fordyce, American—not used to our customs.”

Nina immediately addressed him, “Have I said anything wrong, Forrest?”

He grew redder and more inclined to choke and splutter. What a fortunate thing that the servants had left the room. “You forget the handles to our names, that is all. It is ‘Mr. Gravesham’ and ‘Sir Hervey,’ not ‘Gravesham’ and ‘Forrest.’”

“Oh, thank you,” said Nina, with infantine grace. “I heard Mr. Gravesham calling my husband by his last name, and I thought it was the custom here. It is not American, I assure you. We call everybody at home ‘Mr.’—even the butcher. I am sure I apologise to you both. I will not offend again, Mr. Gravesham and Sir Hervey!” and with a slight and most becoming confusion she quietly continued her dinner.

Mr. Gravesham was sulky and would talk no more, and Sir Hervey was discomposed and a little trifle discontented with his usual favourite; but no one else took the occurrence to heart. Lady Forrest was talking amiably and obliviously to her neighbours, and at last Captain Fordyce’s attention was concentrated on the bowed head of his young wife. She had effectually roused him from his abstraction,—the dear little rude, jealous thing. After dinner he would have a settlement with her, and in his old satisfaction he threw his burden of black care from him, and followed her with his eyes as she left the room with the other ladies.

Where was she? He was one of the first men to leave the dining-room, but she was neither in the drawing-room nor in the conservatory. “I think I saw her going into the garden,” murmured Lady Forrest. “You will find a wrap in the hall. You would do well to take it to her.”

Captain Fordyce strolled out into the garden. It was not a large one, and she was certainly not in it. He walked to and fro. Then placing himself in full view of the drawing-room windows so that she could come to him if she chose to do so, he sat down on a seat and with a weary “Heigh ho!” took out a cigar.

“Heigh ho, here we go, over the sea to the land of the free,” echoed a bantering voice above him.

He looked up. There among the spreading branches of a resplendent copper beech overhead was his wife. She was at her old trick of climbing trees. And in that hundred dollar gown, and his mind lately drawn to pecuniary matters again grew burdened.

However, it would not do to let her see his anxiety, so he said, quietly: “Why did you go up there, Nina?”

“Because I was afraid you would scold me,” she said, with mock solemnity.“What about?”

“About chivying the noble son of an earl.”

“You were not polite.”

“Then let him give you your proper title,” she said, hotly. “He doesn’t like to be called by his last name.”

“They don’t mean anything by it here,” said her husband, wearily. “Different countries, different customs. Whenever I carry grandees on the Merrimac they call me by my surname.”

“They won’t do it when I am about,” she said, with decision. “You are as good as anybody. What is the matter with you this evening?”

“Nothing,” he said, with assumed animation.

“Yes, there is. You’ve had bad news of some kind.”

“Did I show it?” he asked, with chagrin.

“Oh, no, not very much, but I knew.”

His face softened. “It’s nothing, Nina.”

“You’ve fallen in love with some other woman.”

“Good heavens, no—yes, I mean, I have.”

“You’ve lost some money.”

He lighted his cigar, began smoking it, and not until teased and worried by questions rained on him from above did he ejaculate, “Suppose I have. There’s my salary.”“How much did you lose?”

“Come down from that tree, Nina. Somebody might come out from the house and you would be remarked.”

“This is a very nice country,” she returned, cheerfully and irrelevantly.

“I am glad you like it.”

“That is a fine house,” she said, waving her hand toward the stone erection beyond them. “It is a pleasant thing to have a butler and footmen and plenty of maids.”

He grunted something inaudible, and stared up pityingly at the white cloud among the glowing leaves above him.

“And to know how to pour out tea so nicely and properly, and talk about the theatres and the royal family, and the news from the Continent, and our American cousins, and never do anything wrong or think anything improper, and be admired and sought after, and love everybody and have everybody love you.”

He smoked on in grim silence, until she asked, tenderly, “Captain Fordyce, can you ever build me a house like that?”

“Oh, yes,” he said, derisively.

“Can you give me a carriage lined with gray cushions, with a clock in it, and a hand-glass, and cunning little footstools?”

He would not answer her.

“And a palace in a park like the Earl of Somebody or Other’s over across the river?” and she waved her hand toward the Mersey.

“And heaps of fine gowns,” she continued, “silks, and satins, and velvets trimmed with pearls and diamonds and rubies? And I want to be presented at Court and have a house in London.”

“You are modest in your wishes,” he said, between his closed teeth.

She laid her cheek against the tree trunk, and whispered, “How much money did you lose, ’Steban?”

“I lost a trifle that I had laid up for old age.”

“Whose old age?”

“Yours.”

“What about your own?”

“I shall not have any. All our family die young.”

She raised her head to the sky, but could not see it for the thick green thatch above her. “’Steban,” she said, in silvery tones, “men aren’t like women, are they?”

“Not much.”

“If I were a woman in love and had lost money, I would still think of the man I was fond of; but when you think of your business, I fly right out of your mind.”

“Women would be a heap better off if they didn’t stew so much over their love affairs.”

She was dropping purplish brown leaves on him one by one. When a large-sized one took the ashes off the end of his cigar, she laughed gaily, and in a heart-whole fashion, and said, “’Steban, I believe you’ve lost every cent of money you’ve saved.”

“No, I haven’t,” he growled.

“How much have you left?”

“It’s that confounded McGray in New York,” he said, in abrupt and deep-seated resentment. “He’s absconded. I trusted him—thought he was a sure thing on investments. I can’t watch the markets from the Atlantic. There will be a lot of our line out by him.”

“Poor captains!” murmured Nina. Then bending low down on her branch, she said, pleadingly:

“’Steban, tell me all about it.”

“You would not understand. I have said all I am going to say.”

She straightened herself suddenly, and exclaimed, with a martyr-like air, “I have done nothing, yet I must suffer!”

He smoked on, sulking over his losses, yet consoled slightly by the presence of his wood-nymph in the tree overhead. Now she was leaning down again, hanging on by her hands and feet like a monkey, and dropping her light head to within a short distance of him. And what was she whispering with such delicate softness and grace? Something more about the money, and he threw away the stump of his cigar and ejaculated a prosaic “Hey?”

“’Steban,” she whispered again, “what is love?”

He was not in a condition of mind to expatiate on the beauties of the ardent attraction of one human being for another. Recognising this, she went on, in the same low voice: “You’re nothing but a plain, every-day, commonplace sort of man. There’s no poetry in your nature, never was, and never will be. I will tell you what love is;” and moving farther out on the limb that she had chosen for her resting-place, she lightly jogged up and down, and began a joyful monologue.

“This is love. You are a girl not very old, not very young. You fall in love with a man. Some one else wants to marry you—a good many other persons want to marry you. You look at this one; you say, ‘No, my dear sir, you won’t do. You must have long arms and a short temper, and a bronze face and black eyes like shoe buttons. That light hair and that curly moustache won’t do; and to make you perfect, you must have a tiny, a very tiny, bald spot in the middle of your head. And you must be hateful and snappish sometimes, not always sweet and pleasant, because then I would get tired of you. And you must be poor and have to work hard just like a dog, because that will keep you out of mischief. And you mustn’t live in a grand house. No, no, sir, you are too rich. I could never take care of all that grand furniture. House-cleaning would quite upset me; and I hate fine clothes and white kid gloves. It would frighten me to own all those things; and I just detest sitting up straight and keeping my lips pursed up in a smile. I would rather have meadows, nice big meadows to run over, or the deck of a ship—’ ’Steban, what are you doing?” and she ceased her singsong revelation and her swinging at the same time, and glared down at him.

“I am coming up,” he said, casting an apprehensive glance at the house as he balanced himself on the back of the seat. “I suppose I am a fool for it, but you are a regular, possessed little magnet.”

“Have you forgotten about your money?” she asked, exhibiting two rows of gleeful white teeth.“Confound the money,” he responded, stoutly.

She laughed long and delightedly, but in the midst of her amusement deliberately kept ascending higher and higher, never allowing her laughter to prevent her from searching out sure places for her feet.

Her husband kept his eye on her, yet did not caution her. She was as sure-footed as one of his sailor lads. Now she was singing to him:

“Go on!” she exclaimed, when she had finished.

“I can’t,” he said, shortly. “Nina, stop there. I won’t have you climb farther.”

“Men in books always know the next verse,” she said, unheedingly:

“It’s man, always man,” she tittered. “When I was married I didn’t say, love, honour, and obey. I said love, honour, and sway—and, ’Steban, you must be swayed. Stay where you are,” and she tossed off a white kid slipper that, to her delight, struck him on the shoulder before it went leaping down to the grass.

“Nina,” he said, commandingly, “did you mean all that just now; or is it only your condemned nonsense?”

She ran her arm around a branch, and waggishly put her two hands up to her mouth after the manner of a speaking-trumpet. “Officer of the watch,—go ask that damsel if she loves me. If so, well, always well. If not, cast her in the hold and let her in irons repent her folly.”

“You do love me,” he muttered. “You shall go home with me to-night. You have come to your senses at last.”

“The man I love has golden hair,” she chanted from the tree-top; “if you meet him anywhere, tell him I send a loving kiss, a hearty, hearty prayer that he will come and see me soon, and with me tread the heavenly mead of love’s sweet visions fair. A sailor dark, with purpose fell, does strive to tear me from my love, my buxom love with golden hair.”

Captain Fordyce cautiously took a step up, uttering an expletive under his breath, as he heard a warning rip in the region of his knee.

sang the girl, saucily.

she continued. Then she put her head on one side and watched him. ’Steban’s troubles were over. He had seated himself crosswise on one of the stout arms of the tree, and was giving himself up to a beatific survey of the white silk foot above him. Then he waxed sentimental. “Nina,” he said, delightedly, “you have found out that you love me—you love me.”

“There are courts in the temple of love,” she said, with sudden gravity. “I have only entered the outermost one.”

“Did you make that up?” he asked, rapturously. “Is it original?”

“What does it matter whether it grew in my mind or another person’s?”

“Darling!” he ejaculated, foolishly; and he tried to seize the slipperless foot dangling within a yard of him.

Seemingly within his reach, it was immediately withdrawn.He sat for a few minutes in ecstatic silence; then he began to beg her to descend. For fully ten minutes he lavished on her flattery, endearing words, and offers of gifts, dear to feminine hearts, that he would bestow on her in return for the very smallest, fleetest, most evanescent thing in the shape of a caress.

She stared unheedingly up at the sky, and when he brought his eloquent words to a close, she said, “I see a boat in the moon. It is waiting for a bad sailor who has broken his word for the first time in his life.”

Captain Fordyce hastily pulled out his watch and a match-case. Yes, his boat was at the landing-stage waiting to take him to the Merrimac.

“I must go,” he said, hurriedly. “When shall I come for you, Nina?”

“The man in the moon says haste is folly, delay is wisdom, and to take a leap in the dark is a sure landing in the midst of difficulties.”

“There will be plenty of light, Nina,” he pleaded. “Come, now, say good night to Lady Forrest and come home with me.”

“No, thank you, Mr. Lantern,” she replied, decidedly.

“It’s confoundedly lonely on the Merrimac,” he went on. “I miss my little girl till I am half-dead for the sight of her. I am lonely, lonely—” and he dwelt on the word that he thought had power to afflict her.

“Lonely,” she repeated, with a shiver of delight, “most beautiful word in the American language, for it implies future consolation. Put your cheek against the tree trunk.”

He obeyed her, trying at the same time to roll his eyes upward. The experiment was not a success, and she exclaimed, “Look at me, you foolish man. It will slip down to you.”

She was kissing the trunk in tender intoxication. “Give him this if you meet him, my love with golden hair. Tell him I will come to him when I get my diamond slippers and my chariot of silver. But they have to be made to order, and they are not ready yet—’Steban, I don’t want to be impolite, but you had really better be getting home.”

He gave her one last, long, lingering look and slipped down the trunk.

“Good-bye—till I see you again—farewell—adieu,” she called after him, “au revoir, heaven bless you—auf wiedersehen;” but he strode away without a backward glance.