'And my husband,' said Felicia, looking up at him, with her sweet, radiant smile. 'And, oh dear, how I wish you had not to go down again to-night! Do you know, George, I mind each separation worse than the last? Next summer we will send the children straight to "The Gully," and we will stay comfortably together.' Maud came back in the highest spirits. 'Look here,' she said, showing a handful of snow, and fingers red and blue with unaccustomed cold--'how nice it is to feel it once again! And what nectar the air is! And, George, actually, strawberries!' 'Yes,' said Vernon, 'and cream, and plenty of both. Is it not enchanting?' 'You shall have some flowers too, dear,' cried Maud, who seldom missed an opportunity of petting Felicia and letting her love run out in some pretty act or speech. 'See, this rose was made for me to deck you with. Does she not look charming, George?' 'Hush!' said George; 'we shall make her and the little girls too as vain as possible. Now, as I suppose nobody means to crown me, I vote that you go and get ready for breakfast, and I will prepare Maud a plate of strawberries-and-cream, by way of beginning the feast.' That morning lived ever afterwards in Maud's thoughts as one of the times when the world looked brightest to her. Everything was full of excitement, interest and keen pleasure. If from time to time a thought of Sutton set her heart beating, it was more that she had learnt to worship him as an ideal of all that was most charming in man than that his absence cost her any serious regret. It had given her a pang to part and to feel how little of a pang it had given him. He had been almost unconscious of her departure; he had been certainly quite, quite indifferent to it. Such insensibility was a little speck on the otherwise spotless perfection; but Maud's heart was too light for this to weigh it down for long. A long, charming vista of enjoyment was opening before her. Half-a-dozen people, she knew, were awaiting her arrival with impatience and thought Elysium not quite Elysium till she was there. Before the morning was over there would come, so her prophetic soul announced, kind familiar faces, all the brighter for her presence, with all sorts of delightful projects, often talked of beforehand, now to come into actual fruition; rides, picnics, dances, theatricals, and (thrilling thought!) a fancy ball, at which Maud had already found herself twenty times whirling in anticipated valses, each more enchanting than the last. Who could contemplate such a prospect with equanimity? or whose heart have room for gloomy thoughts with so many bright dreams to crush them out?