"Yes, a viper, a degenerate," said Chelda, sweetly. "I dare say his family was highly respectable. He had probably deceived your father. We make ourselves." Derrice's eyes flashed. She forgot the new ornament of a meek and lowly spirit that she had lately put on, and was just about to make an irritated retort when her husband's paper rustled again. It called her attention to him. She felt his unexpressed and heartfelt sympathy, and, choking back her emotion, she silently sank back in her seat. Miss Gastonguay had left the room, ostensibly to see why Prosperity had not brought in the tea on the stroke of ten. She met him in the hall, but she did not turn back. "Tell them I have gone to bed," she said, shortly. "I have a headache." Then, going on her way up-stairs, she soliloquised, wearily, "Not heredity, but environment. Environment only,--then are my skirts clean? Louis was nine--no, ten--when our mother died. I had a hand in his upbringing. Bah! I will not believe it. Not environment, say I, but heredity only. Heredity and individual responsibility. There is bad blood in the family. He knows it as well as I do." CHAPTER XXIII. WHEN A MAN'S HAPPY. April drifted after March. May came, then June and July, and with them the opening of the summer hotels on the Bay, and the usual influx of visitors. Derrice was very much occupied now. She knew nearly all the residents of the town, and a great many of the visitors, and Justin was obliged to check her in her too great devotion to literary clubs and social gatherings, and to work for the church of which she was now a zealous member. With more pleasure than he had ever before experienced in holiday-making in his busy life, he often started from home with her in the morning, and installing her in his blue-lined boat would row across the Bay and out its mouth to the wild and rocky shore beyond. Out there were green islands, white villages hidden in smiling coves, passing ships, and many excursion boats. He knew well every point of interest, but each successive discovery was a new pleasure for Derrice, and, filled with the rapture of exploration, she would urge him on until the shades of evening warned them to return. In spite of her appreciation of the world outside the Bay, she liked better the five small rivers with the Indian names that went leaping merrily down into it. Only one was navigable,--its rapids were far up,--and of this one she never tired. Day after day when bank hours were over she begged Justin to conduct her to it, and when she found herself alone with him in its sylvan solitudes she invariably fell into a state of mental intoxication.