And Josephine was quite happy again, and content. It suited her better to be fast than to play the part of a quiet, discreet woman, and so long as she did not overstep the bounds of decency, or greatly outrage the rules of propriety, she argued that it was no one’s business what she did or how much attention she received. As Axie had predicted, the real color was showing through the whitewash, and people began to understand the reason why Everard was becoming so grave, and reserved, and even old in his appearance, with a look upon his face such as no ordinary trouble could ever have written there. And so the summer waned and autumn came and went, and then Josephine, who, while affecting to be so merry and gay, writhed under the slights so often put upon her, discovered that she needed a change of air, and decided that a winter in Florida was necessary to her health and happiness, and applied to Everard for the means with which to carry out her plan. At first Everard objected to the Florida trip as something much more expensive than he felt able to meet, but his consent was finally given, and one morning in December the clerk at the St. James Hotel, in Jacksonville, wrote upon his books “Mrs. J. E. Forrest and maid, and Miss Agnes Fleming, Rothsay, Ohio,” while a week later there was entered upon another page, “Dr. John Matthewson, New York City,” and two weeks later still “Mrs. Andrews and family, and Miss Rosamond Hastings, St. Louis, Mo.” CHAPTER XL. DR. MATTHEWSON’S GAME. The St. James was full that season, and when Mrs. J. E. Forrest arrived she found every room occupied, and was compelled to take lodgings at a house across the Park, where guests from the hotel were sometimes accommodated with rooms, and where, in addition to her own parlor and bedroom, she found a large square chamber, which she asked the mistress of the house to reserve for a few days, as she was expecting an old friend of her husband’s, and would like to have him near her, inasmuch as Mr. Forrest was not able to come with her on account of his business. Later in the season he might join her, but now he was too busy. She laid great stress upon having a husband, and she was so gracious, and affable, and pretty, that her landlady, Mrs. Morris, was charmed at once, and indorsed the beautiful woman who attracted so much attention in the street, and who at the hotel took everything by storm. She had laid aside her mourning, and blossomed out in a most exquisite suit of navy-blue silk and velvet, which, although made in Paris more than a year before, was still a little in advance of the Florida fashions, and was admired by every lady in the hotel, and patterns of the pocket, and cuffs, and overskirt were mentally taken and experimented upon in the ladies’ rooms, where the grace, and beauty, and probable antecedents of the stranger were freely discussed.