I looked at her in uncertainty as to her mood, but she left me in doubt, and began telling me about society at the Point, her friend Mrs. Woodruff, and the houseful of guests. She told me stories with some scandalous flavor about them, enough to give them a zest; she mimicked all the earnest people and spoke with contempt of all the shallow ones; she appeared to have fathomed all the petty under-currents which influenced people's actions, detected every shade of pretension and studied all the affectations and habits of the men and women she saw intimately. All this, too, without betraying any personal liking for one of them, and seeming to regard them all as mere puppets, to some of whom she attached herself when there was anything to gain, and from whom she withdrew herself when there was anything to lose. But she was too clever to allow me time to think what qualities of mind and heart lay behind this philosophy, and I was very much diverted. "I must take you to see Mrs. Woodruff," she remarked. "You will be welcome in the set as flowers in May. You are spending the summer here, I suppose?" "I have no plans. Where my mother is I shall be for the present, I have been separated from her so long." "How beautiful! But about your future, Floyd? Have you a career decided upon, or are you to be a gentleman of leisure?" I flushed: "My resolution is not taken as to what I shall be--certainly not an idle man." "I can tell your fortune," she said in a low voice. "You need not cross my palm with silver for it, either." "With gold, then?" "I will tell it for love, but it is a golden fortune. You will marry Helen Floyd." "No," said I with decision and some anger, "I shall never marry Helen. You do me too much honor. She would never look at me; and if she would there is something within me which forbids my marrying a rich woman. But it is nonsense. For Heaven's sake don't allude to it again! The man who marries her will be, to my thinking, the most fortunate of men, but--" "We won't talk about it," said she good-naturedly. "There comes Mr. Thorpe to bid us good-morning. Astonishing how well he likes the walk to The Headlands!" It was Thorpe indeed, carelessly but irreproachably dressed as usual, and looking at us with a smile of internal amusement, which he was probably too well-bred to express in words, for he merely drawled a good-morning and remarked on the beauty of the day. "You're a famous pedestrian in these days, Thorpe," I said, rising with a trifle of embarrassment from my seat as close to Miss Lenox's as the rocks permitted, "and an early riser too. When I got up this morning at half-past six I told myself that I should see nobody for three hours at least, yet both Miss Lenox and you equal me in my love for the early morning hours."