June was now in full reign. If Yellowcoats were not perfect to the senses now, it never would be. The days were so long, the nights so soft and moonlit, the air, night and day, so full of fragrance. The ladies sat late on the lawn, by the beach gate. Even Mrs. Varian had ventured to come down, leaning on her daughter's arm, and sit, carefully wrapped, and with a rug spread over the grass, to watch the beauty of the sunset. The second evening after their exodus from his roof, Mr. Andrews found them so sitting, as he strolled down to the beach after dinner. The dinner had been good, the wine had been good, his cigar was good; but there was an indefinite something wanted, a flavor of companionship and human interest. He looked longingly over the hedge; he wondered if Miss Rothermel would remember how angry she had been, when Miss Varian told him, it was one of his duties to his neighbor, to come and smoke an after-dinner cigar on the lawn. He was quite interested in this speculation--how good was Miss Rothermel's memory? Sometimes he thought it very strong, sometimes he wondered at its non-existence. As he never forgot anything himself, and generally did what he meant to do, Missy was naturally a puzzle to him. She evidently had forgotten about the observation of Miss Varian, for she looked up with a very pleasant smile, when the grating of the beach gate on its hinges, caused her to turn her head. She pulled forward upon the rug a chair which had been standing beside her with books and a shawl upon it. These she put on the bench at her feet, and Mr. Andrews took the chair. "You are sitting with your back to the sunset," she said, after the subsiding of the froth of welcoming talk among the little party. "Well, so are you," he said. "But I have a reason, and you haven't." "No reason, except that you put my chair just where it is, and I didn't dare to move it." Missy frowned; it reminded her that she had heard it stated by this gentleman, that he was afraid of her. "A plague upon it, what have I said now," he thought. "I am watching that boat," went on Miss Rothermel, letting drop his remark about the chair, as if it had not been worth answering. "Do you see how she is shilly-shallying there in the mouth of the harbor? There is a good breeze to bring her in, and she will lose it, if she doesn't look out. A little while ago she ran in--crept along the Neck a way, then stood out again, and now, nobody can guess what she means to do, except that she evidently doesn't want to go away. I have been watching her since five o'clock." "Whose boat is it?" asked Mr. Andrews. "Does she belong about here?" "No, I am sure not; I think I know all the boats that belong in the harbor, and she has an odd, unfamiliar look."