Maude sported the first short dress which had appeared in Rocky Point, and she looked so odd, and pretty withal, in her girlish costume of white, trimmed with a pale buff, and she wore such stylish gaiters, and showed them so much with their silken tassels, that Uncle Phil confessed again to a “curis feeling in his stomach,” and was not sure whether it was quite the thing for an old chap like him to let his eyes rest often on those little feet, and that trim, lithe form, which flitted so airily around the wickets, and made such havoc with the enemy’s balls. It surely was not well for a young man like _Jack_ to look at her often, he decided, especially when arrayed in that short gown, which made her look so like a little girl, and showed her feet so plainly. They had a merry game, and Jack was interested in spite of himself, and accepted Uncle Phil’s invitation to stay to dinner, and felt a queer little throb in his veins when Maude, acknowledging Edna and himself victors, insisted upon crowning them as such, and wove a wreath of myrtle for Edna’s hair, while for him she gathered a bouquet, and fastened it in his button-hole. She had said to Edna, “I shall tell Mr. Heyford that I know your secret. I must talk to somebody about it.” And seizing the opportunity when Edna was in the house consulting with Becky about the dessert, she told him what she had discovered, and waxed so enthusiastic over “little Dot,” and arranged the bouquet in his button-hole a little more to her liking, and stood, with her glowing face and fragrant breath, so near to him, and did it all so innocently, that Jack began to wonder he had never before observed “how very beautiful Miss Somerton was, and what pleasant ways she had,” and when he went back to the Mountain House at night, his heart, though very sore and sad, was not utterly crushed and desolate. He played croquet the next day and the next, sometimes with Edna for his partner, but oftener with Maude, who, being the champion player, undertook to teach him and correct some of his faults. He must not _poke_, nor stand behind, nor strike too hard, nor go after other balls when he could as well make his wicket first. And Jack tried to learn, and do his teacher justice, and became at last almost as interested in the game as Maude herself, whom he sometimes beat. And when at the end of his two weeks’ vacation he went back to his business in New York, he seemed much like himself, and Edna felt that he was bearing his disappointment bravely, and that in time life would be to him just what it had been before he thought of her. Maude’s departure followed close upon Jack’s, and as she bade Edna good-by, she said, “I shall never rest, Dotty, till I see you at Leighton, where you belong. But I want you to go there first as Louise Overton. Take my word for it, you will succeed better so, with _la mère_, and possibly with _le frère_ too. When they come home I am going to manage for you. See now if I don’t Adieu.”