She reined in her beautiful black animal with an imperative "Where have you been?" "To Cloverdale on business. A farmer who is ill sent for me." "What is your wife doing?" "She is yachting to-day." "What with her shore dinners, and her clambakes, and drives, and sailing parties, and golf, and tennis, and visits to the poor, I never see her now," grumbled Miss Gastonguay. "I want her to myself for one afternoon. Will you all come up next Thursday and have a picnic in my woods?" Justin assured her that they would be glad to do so. "And have your mother come, and that extraordinary man, her husband." Justin's big white teeth gleamed approvingly, then a silence fell between them. They were on the summit of a bluff one hundred feet above a flat, white beach. As from the height of some battlement they looked out on a wide blue stretch of water. The view was one of exquisite peace and beauty, yet Miss Gastonguay's eyes came drearily back to her companion's quietly happy face. "You don't let that child spend any of the wanderer's money?" "Not a cent." "That's good, but how do you explain your economies when she knows he has money?" "I don't explain them fully." "And she submits?" "Yes." "You must have been very much in love to have married the daughter of such a man," she said, with a curious wonder in her voice. He had been, but he said nothing, and quietly restrained his horse, which was impatiently pawing the ground in the direction of Rossignol. "You are not willing for me to give her presents," Miss Gastonguay went on. "I had rather you would not do so." She left him with as little ceremony as she had greeted him; and, with all the gladness taken from the bright summer afternoon, he went sadly on his way. Miss Gastonguay was not an old woman, yet she was breaking up. The discovery that her long-lost brother, whom she had hoped was dead, was living as a prey upon society had humbled her pride and broken her spirit. The black shadow of disgrace hung continually over her, and Justin uneasily wondered whether he had done right to give her the shock that had eaten the heart and comfort out of her life. He thought he had. He had fulfilled his duty; he had kept his promise to the unhappy man who wished his daughter to come under the protection of the sister so long separated from him. This had afforded Miss Gastonguay the consolation of Derrice, and a day might come, a day would come, he feared, when her ministrations and forgiveness might be needed for the wanderer himself. It was better for a woman of her temperament to have time to brood over a matter than to have it suddenly announced to her. Then, too, in spite of her trouble, she had become softened,--more womanly, less hard,--and she had gained either an additional devotion, or a wonderful simulation of it, from her elder niece, the one upon whom she had lavished her wealth and affection for so many years.