They had better have turned me houseless into the street than have turned me out of their hearts in this way; in one case, I could have sought another shelter, and won myself another home. In this, I was driven out, burning with anger and stung with injustice, from every heart I had had a right to seek a home in, and before me lay a cold and inhospitable world. Was the outcast or the world to blame for the inevitable result? The outcast, no doubt; outcasts always are. * * * * * "Look--look, Josephine!" cried Grace, bursting into the library, where most of the party were assembled that evening. Josephine, with her foot on the sofa, being the nucleus. "Ella, and Phil, and I have just come from rowing on the lake, and see what we found, up by the pine trees at the other end of the lake, floating on the water." "What is it?" said Josephine, languidly; "a water-lily?" "Water-lilies used to be white when I studied botany, Joseph, and this, you may observe, is purple." "And morning-glories, when I studied botany," said Phil, "did not grow on lakes, but in gardens. Now, as this was discovered on the water, the question naturally arises, how, by whom, and under what circumstances, did it get there?" "And putting this and that together," said Ella Wynkar, "we think that the young lady who had morning-glories in her dress this morning, must have taken a row on the lake, instead of a walk on the terrace." "That doesn't follow," said Victor, "any more than it would follow that Miss Wynkar had visited the desert of Sahara, if a straw hat similar to the one she has in her hand, should be found there." "Mr. Viennet, you are not sufficiently calm for such difficult reasoning. The fact is established; don't attempt to controvert it," said Josephine. "In any case, I am entitled to the flower, I think," he returned, taking it from the table, and fastening it in his button-hole. "No one will dispute it with you, I fancy," said Josephine, with a laugh. "You seem to have marked your way with morning-glories," said Mr. Rutledge, who, sitting by the table, was turning over the leaves of a book. There was another, crushed and faded, and staining the leaves with its purple blood. "One can hardly believe they are contemporaries," said Victor, "mine is so much fresher." "They are the frailest and shortest-lived of flowers," said Mr. Rutledge, tossing the flower away. "Hardly worth the passing admiration that their beauty excites." CHAPTER XXVI. "If hope but deferred causeth sickness of heart, What sorrow, to see it forever depart." "This rain knocks the pic-nic all in the head," said Phil, lounging into the breakfast-room, "and everybody's sure of being in a bad humor on account of the disappointment. What shall we all do with ourselves?" "Play billiards, can't we?" said the captain.