"I believe you know my aunt, Mrs. Gervase, in town," he said. "I think I saw you at one of her dances, in January." "Mrs. Gervase is the dearest thing," interrupted Miss Eliot, conscious of blankness in her tone. "She may be, but it would be a brave person who would tell her so. She is a delightful, but autocratic, personage; and one of the treats of the year for me is to get away to her and my uncle for a holiday, when they have no one else. This is one of those rare occasions. The cottage people who have come down to Sheepshead have a tacit agreement to keep to themselves, just now. They are supposed to be getting their houses to rights, and making gardens, and what not. Mrs. Gervase says they are really wearing out the past season's gloves, and putting tonics on their hair, and trying new cures and doses, for which there was no time before leaving town. The days will pass in doing as we please, and in the evening we shall dine well (for the Gervases have a corker of a cook), after which my aunt and uncle and I will take each a book and a lamp into some nook of the library, and read till bedtime. You can't imagine a life more to my taste." "Prohibitory to outsiders, at least," said Gladys. "This is, as I suppose you mean it to be, awfully alarming to me; for I haven't told you that I am for three weeks to be Mrs. Gervase's nearest neighbor. I am going to visit an old friend of my mother's,--Mrs. Luther Prettyman." Grove experienced a sensation of dismay. The Prettymans! Château Calicot, as he had dubbed their new florid "villa," built on the shore in objectionable proximity to his uncle's house, some three years back! He remembered the vines planted, the shrubs set out, the rattan screens hung, the final adjustment of chairs by Mrs. Gervase, in the attempt to shut out every glimpse of the Prettyman belongings from their place of daily rendezvous on the veranda at Stoneacres; his uncle's sly amusement when the cupola of the Prettyman stables, and the roof of a detestable little sugar-temple tea-house were projected on their line of vision, spite of all. Mrs. Gervase could not forgive herself for not having secured that point of land when land was so ridiculously cheap. On an average of once a day, she reminded her husband that she had begged him to do so, and he had put it off until too late.