Arthur awoke the next morning with a confused consciousness of splendors and regret; a mood which seemed superinduced by some forgotten dream. His first perceptions, however, were of the glory of the morning and the budding, bursting season. The shade had been drawn up by a servant; and from his bed he saw through the open window mile after mile of the country-side, and beyond it the broad, gay river, wearing, like a new gown, the blue of early summer. What nests of men might be in sight were lost in the white glow of blossoms; but the birds made their presence vocal, singing in the close boughs unseen. No man with a trace of sap left in him could lie inert at such a time; and Arthur rang the bell and asked the servant when they might have breakfast. “There is no bell, sir,” said he; “the ladies mostly breakfasts by eleven, and the gentlemen when they like. Have you found your things, sir?” As everything of Arthur’s had been laid out and brushed in most attractive order, he had; and he dressed and sought the breakfast-room. Here was no one but Mrs. Malgam, who, attired in a diaphanous material of many folds and pale tea-rose ribbons, was standing at the window like a thing bereft. But as Arthur came in, her face mantled with smiles that could have hardly “been much sweeter for the blush between.” “Oh, Mr. Holyoke, I am so glad you’ve come,” said she. “It _is_ so poky, breakfasting alone.” Mrs. Malgam sat down to make the tea; and Arthur sat down beside her. “What pretty hands she has,” thought Arthur; “I never noticed them before.” And just as he thought this, her blue eyes fixed his, looking suddenly up from the tea. “One lump or two?” said she. “One,” said Arthur, gravely. A word should be given to Baby Malgam, as many thought her likely to be Flossie Gower’s rival; that is at some day, for as yet our heroine still distanced her. It is true, Flossie was a nobody, by birth; so was Mrs. Malgam; but her first husband had been Mr. Ten Eyck. Flossie was rich, but so at this time was Mrs. Malgam; Flossie was no longer young, while Baby’s ivory skin still was smooth with youth and pleasure and lack of care. Baby had been poor; and now she had three houses and four horses and forty ball-dresses and a young and fashionable and careless husband and an opera-box, and the grace and _cachet_ of her own to properly adorn all these things--a grace which had been almost a trial to her when, already conscious of it, she had feared it was to be never used, but born like a blossom of the fields, to die there, and not in a china vase. But now she had her china vase, and was happy, and fast forgetting the fields, and him who had wandered with her in them; and regretted, not that he was dead, but that she was growing stout. And it was very cosey and charming for Arthur to be sitting with her so prettily at breakfast.