"He does not wish to be teased about me," she thought, and around the warm spot which the name of "Cousin Maude" had made within her heart there crept a nameless chill--a fear that she had been degraded in his eyes. "I must go back to Louis," she said at last, and rising from her mother's grave she returned to the house, accompanied by Mr. De Vere, who walked by her side in silence, wondering if she really cared for J.C.'s untimely joke. James De Vere did not understand the female heart, and wishing to relieve Maude from all embarrassment in her future intercourse with himself, he said to her as they reached the door: "My Cousin Maude must not mind what J.C. said, for she knows it is not so." "Certainly not," was Maude's answer, as she ran upstairs, hardly knowing whether she wished it were or were not so. One thing, however, she knew. She liked to have him call her Cousin Maude; and when Louis asked what Mr. De Vere had said beneath the willows she told him of her new name, and asked if he did not like it. "Yes," he answered, "but I'd rather you were his sister, for then maybe he'd call me brother, even if I am a cripple. How I wish I could see him, and perhaps I shall to-morrow." But on the morrow Louis was so much worse that in attending to him Maude found but little time to spend with Mr. De Vere, who was to leave them that evening. When, however, the carriage which was to take him away stood at the gate, she went down to bid him good-by, and ask him to visit them again. "I shall be happy to do so," he said; and then, as they were standing alone together, he continued: "Though I have not seen as much of you as I wished, I shall remember my visit at Laurel Hill with pleasure. In Hampton there are not many ladies for whose acquaintance I particularly care, and I have often wished that I had some female friend with whom I could correspond, and thus while away some of my leisure moments. Will my Cousin Maude answer me if I should some time chance to write to her mere friendly, cousinly letters, of course?" This last he said because he mistook the deep flush on Maude's cheek for an unwillingness to do anything which looked at all like "making love." "I will write," was all Maude had a chance to say ere Nellie joined them, accompanied by J.C., who had not yet terminated his visit at Laurel Hill, and as soon as his cousin left he intended removing to the hotel, where he would be independent of Dr. Kennedy, and at the same time, devote himself to the daughter or stepdaughter, just as he should feel inclined. Some such idea might have intruded itself upon the mind of James, for, when at parting he took his cousin's hand, he said, "You have my good wishes for your success with Nellie, but--" "But not with t'other one, hey?" laughingly rejoined J.C., adding that James need have no fears, for there was not the slightest possibility of his addressing the milkman's heiress.