Beatrice shook her off as gently as possible, and answered that she should certainly try to do right, and asked after Agnes, and how her visitor liked Rothsay, and if Rosamond had written to her, and gradually drew the conversation away from dangerous ground, and did it in such a manner that Josephine felt that she had more to fear from Bee Belknap than from all the world besides. And she had, for Bee’s opinion was worth more than that of any twenty people in Rothsay; and when it was known that there was little or no intercourse between Elm Park and the Forrest House, that the two ladies were polite to each other and nothing more, that Beatrice never expressed herself with regard to Mrs. Forrest or mentioned her in any way, but was on the same friendly terms with Everard as ever, and when, as a crowning act, she made a little dinner party from which Josephine was omitted, the people who had been loudest in Josey’s praises began to whisper together that there must be something wrong, and gradually a cloud not larger than a man’s hand began to show itself on the horizon. But small as it was, Josephine discovered its rising, and fought it with all her power, even going so far as to insinuate that jealousy and disappointment were the causes of Miss Belknap’s coolness toward her. But this fell powerless and dead, and Josey could no more injure Beatrice than she could turn the channel of the river from its natural course. For a time, however, Josephine held her ground with a few, but when early in June the new hotel on the river road was filled with people from the South, many of them gay, reckless young men, ready for any excitement, she began to show her real nature, and her assumed modesty and reticence slipped from her like a garment unfitted to the wearer. How she managed it no one could guess, but in less than two weeks she knew every young man stopping at the Belknap House, as it was named in honor of Beatrice, and in less than three weeks she had taken them all to drive with her, and Forrest House was no longer lonely for want of company, for the doors stood open till midnight, and young men lounged on the steps and in the parlors, and came to lunch and dinner, and the rooms were filled with cigar-smoke, and Bacchanalian songs were sung by the half-tipsy young men, and toasts were drank to their fair hostess, whom they dubbed “Golden Hair,” and called an angel to her face, and at her back, among themselves, a _brick_, and even “the old girl,” so little did they respect or really care for her.