The servant comes in and the sentence is unfinished. But Jasper Wilmarth is thinking that no doubt the handsome young man is very pleasing to Mrs. Floyd Grandon, and if the husband should wake up some day on the verge of a scandal, why, it will be one of those rare strokes of accidental, otherwise poetic justice. Marcia _does_ go "home," as they still call the place. Eugene is not about and Mrs. Latimer is spending the afternoon in an old-fashioned way with a nurse and two children. Marcia's fine moral sense is shocked at the duplicity of Mrs. Floyd, and she announces the fact to her husband at dinner, to which he replies with an uncomfortable laugh. Eugene brings Violet a letter on his return, and her face is illumined with eager joy. She cannot wait to retire becomingly to her own room, but breaks the seal on the porch, and is deep in its contents. "Oh!" she cries at first, in disappointment. "Floyd has gone on to Chicago," announces Eugene. "Wilmarth turned black as a thunder-cloud over the news. He scents treason, stratagems, and conspiracies." Violet looks up in curious amaze. "Mr. Grandon will never do anything--that is _not_ right," she adds, after a moment. Eugene shrugs his shoulders. "What may be right enough for him might hit Wilmarth hard," says the young man, and the tone implies that he would rather enjoy the hard hitting. Violet hardly hears that. She colors delicately over the remainder of the letter, which is not long, but touches her inexpressibly. He misses her amid all this haste and turmoil, and it is sweet to be so dear to him, that he really wants her, that he would like to be at home with her. "Papa sends you a dozen kisses," she says, as Cecil comes flying towards her. She is so gay and vivacious through dinner, and afterwards they go out on the river, rowed by Briggs, for Eugene is much too careful of his hands and his exertion to undertake such work this delicious evening. He and Violet sing duets as the purple film displaces the glories of azure and gold, and the twilight shadows the dusky bits of wood, the frowning rocks, and the indentations of shore that might be nereid haunts. The sky turns from its vivid tints to a dreamy gray, then a translucent blue, and a few stars steal slowly out. How lovely it all is! How kind Eugene is proving himself, and she wonders that she never remarked his pleasant traits before! Was it being so much in love with madame that made him captious and irritable, or was it Marcia's little ways of remarking upon every word or act that did not quite please her? "We must go back," she says, presently. "Cecil has fallen asleep, and it will not do to keep her out in the night air. How utterly lovely it is!" and she gives a deep inspiration of content. "It is because you enjoy everything in that keen, ardent sort of way," says Eugene. "You are very different from what I thought you at first." "What did you think me?" she asks, in spite of Briggs sitting calmly there.