A dusky, _piquante_ face, arch, sparkling, bright, as only brunette faces _can_ be, dark, waving hair, and pansy-dark eyes with golden lights in their soft depth, delicious lips, tinted with the velvety crimson of the rose, a slight girlish figure, unformed as yet, but with a willowy grace all its own--Reine Langton. She comes singing along the graveled path between the trim borders of bright verbenas, velvety pansies and fragrant pinks, swinging her large straw hat by its scarlet ribbons. The golden light of the summer day falls on the uncovered head, and on the fair, low forehead with its silky rings of clustering hair, and its slender, straight, black brows. She sings shrilly, but sweetly "'Love not--love not, ye hapless sons of clay; Hope's gayest wreaths are made of earthly flowers; Things that were made to fade and fall away When they have blossomed but a few short hours; Love not--love not.'" The handsome, blonde face of a young man lifts itself from the reclining depths of a hammock-chair, swung under a wide-spreading tree; as she draws nearer, he breaks out with careless raillery: "Pray forbear, Miss Langton! your shrill soprano has frightened me from a charming dream. I do not believe your match could be found for keeping one's nerves continually on edge." "Men have no business with nerves," she retorts, coolly. "For shame, Mr. Vane Charteris. Get out of that hammock and stir yourself. I can't abide a lazy man." He looks at her with sleepy, half-shut eyes that mirror the deep, beautiful blue of the sky overhead. "Fortunately you do not have to abide me," he says, bruskly. "After to-morrow I shall forever be out of reach of your shrill voice and scolding tongue!" A strange look comes into her dark eyes a moment. Some of the golden light dies out of them, they grow darker and vaguely sad, but she laughs. "A pity for you, too. My influence and example might rouse you otherwise from your stupid inertia. Tennyson must have had a lazy man in his mind's eye when he wrote the Lotos-Eaters." He smiles, and quotes with careless good-nature: "'In the hollow Lotos-land to live and lie reclined On the hills, like gods together, careless of mankind.'" "Is not that an idyllic life, Reine?" "No," she says, promptly. "I have no patience with the _dolce far niente_ of some people. It is a pity you are to marry Maud Langton!" He colors, and asks: "Why?" "Because she is as lazy as you are. When you marry her and come into Uncle Langton's money, you'll both be too lazy to breathe, just _that_! You will die for lack of energy to live." She has stopped beside the hammock-chair, and leaning against the tree looks down into the handsome, debonair face with a gleam of audacious levity in the dusky eyes. He starts up to a sitting posture, thoroughly aggravated.