“You mean Rossie Hastings, his adopted sister. Yes, she is there still, and a very nice, womanly little thing. She is sixteen, I believe, though she seems to me younger,” Beatrice said, and the impression left on Josephine’s mind of Rossie was of a child, in whom Everard could not be greatly interested except in a brotherly way. She had made all the inquiries she cared to make just then, lest she should excite suspicion in Beatrice, and was meditating a retreat, when the sound of rapid wheels reached them, and a moment after a tall, slender young man, not over twenty, came down the walk flourishing his little cane and showing plainly the half-fledged boy, who was beginning to feel all the independence and superiority of a man. Bowing very low to Beatrice, to whom he was introduced as Mr. Gerard from Albany, he told Josephine he had come to ask her to drive after his fast horse. “You were at church all the morning, and deserve a little recreation,” he said, as he saw signs of refusal in Josey, who, sure that Miss Belknap would not accept a like invitation felt that she, too, must refuse; so she said very sweetly and a little reprovingly: “Thank you, Mr. Gerard, but I do not often ride on Sunday. Some other day I shall be happy to go with you, for I dote on fast horses, but now you must excuse me.” Young Gerard was surprised, for he had not expected to find conscientious scruples in the girl who the previous night, had played euchre with him until half-past eleven, and then stood another half hour at the gate, laughing and flirting with him, though she had met him but once before. He was not accustomed to be thwarted, and he showed that he was annoyed, and answered loftily: “Certainly, do as you think best. If you won’t ride with me, I must find somebody who will. I wish you good-afternoon, ladies.” Touching his hat very politely he walked away; but Josephine could not let him go in this mood. He was her latest conquest, and she arose and followed him, and walked with him to the gate, and said to him apologetically: “I want to go awfully, but it will never do with a missionary’s family in the house.” “Bother take the missionaries,” he said. “I wanted to show you how fast Dido can trot.” “Yes, I know; but there are other days than Sunday, and there are lots of girls aching to go with you to-day,” Josephine said, as she fastened a little more securely the bouquet in his button-hole, and let her hands rest longer on his coat-sleeve than was necessary. “But I shan’t take ’em. I shall wait for you,” he answered, quite soothed and mollified. Then he bade her good-by, and drove off, while Josephine returned to Beatrice and said, laughingly: “What bores boys of a certain age are, and how they always fasten upon a girl older than themselves! This Gerard cannot be over twenty. He reminds me a little in his dress of Everard Forrest when he first came here, so fastidious and elegant, as if he had just stepped from a bandbox.”