Heathcroft came and went at various times during the summer. I met him on the golf course and he was condescendingly friendly as ever. Our talk concerning Frances, which had brought such momentous consequences to her and to Hephzy and to me, had, apparently, not disturbed him in the least. He greeted me blandly and cheerfully, asked how we all were, said he had been given to understand that “my charming little niece” was no longer with us, and proceeded to beat me two down in eighteen holes. I played several times with him afterward and, under different circumstances, should have enjoyed doing so, for we were pretty evenly matched. His aunt, the Lady of the Manor, I also met. She went out of her way to be as sweetly gracious as possible. I presume she inferred from Frances' departure that I had taken her hint and had removed the disturbing influence from her nephew's primrose-bordered path. At each of our meetings she spoke of the “invitation golf tournament,” several times postponed and now to be played within a fortnight. She insisted that I must take part in it. At last, having done everything except decline absolutely, I finally consented to enter the tournament. It is not easy to refuse to obey an imperial decree and Lady Carey was Empress of Mayberry. After accepting I returned to the rectory to find that Hephzy also had received an invitation. Not to play golf, of course; her invitation was of a totally different kind. “What do you think, Hosy!” she cried. “I've got a letter and you can't guess who it's from.” “From Susanna?” I ventured. “Susanna! You don't suppose I'd be as excited as all this over a letter from Susanna Wixon, do you? No indeed! I've got a letter from Mrs. Hepton, who had the Nickerson cottage last summer. She and her husband are in Paris and they want us to meet 'em there in a couple of weeks and go for a short trip through Switzerland. They got our address from Mr. Campbell before they left home. Mrs. Hepton writes that they're countin' on our company. They're goin' to Lake Lucerne and to Mont Blanc and everywhere. Wouldn't it be splendid!” The Heptons had been summer neighbors of ours on the Cape for several seasons. They were friends of Jim Campbell's and had first come to Bayport on his recommendation. I liked them very well, and, oddly enough, for I was not popular with the summer colony, they had seemed to like me. “It was very kind of them to think of us,” I said. “Campbell shouldn't have given them our address, of course, but their invitation was well meant. You must write them at once. Make our refusal as polite as possible.” Hephzy seemed disappointed, I thought. “Then you think I'd better say no?” she observed. “Why, of course. You weren't thinking of accepting, were you?”