“Oh yes, why not?” said Isabel. “My case is very different from yours. I shall be just as idle as I like. I shall have horses, you know and a big conservatory, and a piano, and all that. We shall have lots of people here all summer long--just think what fishing parties we can make up!--and whenever it gets stupid we can run down to New York. Oh, I’ve got quite beyond the reconciled stage now. I am almost enthusiastic over it. When you come back in a year’s time, you won’t know the place. It will have been transformed into a centre of fashion and social display. I may get to have a veritable salon, you know, the envy and despair of all Dearborn County. Fancy Elhanan Pratt and Sile Thomas in evening dress, with patent leather pumps and black stockings, scowling at Leander Crump, with a crushed hat under his arm, whom they suspect of watering his milk! Oh, we shall be gay, I assure you.” Seth looked at her attentively, puzzled to know how much of this was badinage, how much sincerity. She smiled archly at him--what a remarkably winning smile she had!--and continued: “Then Annie will be company for me, too. I mean to bring her out, you know, and make her a leader of society. In a year’s time when you come back and I introduce you to her, you won’t be able to credit your senses, her air will be so _distingué_, and her tastes so fastidious.” She ceased her gay chatter abruptly, for Annie had turned away and they could see that her eyes were filling with tears. Seth bethought him of those earlier tears, the signs of which had been so obvious when they started, and it was natural enough to connect the two. “Something _has_ happened, Annie,” he said. “Can’t you tell us what it is?” And then he bit his tongue at having made the speech, for Annie turned a beseeching look at him, then at Isabel, and burst into sobs. “Isn’t it reason enough that you are going away?” said Isabel. “What more could you ask?” “No, it isn’t that alone,” protested Annie through her tears. Her pride would not brook the assumption. “There is something else; I can hardly tell you--but--but--my grandmother has suddenly taken a great dislike to Seth; if she knew where I was she would be very angry: I never deceived her, even indirectly, before, but I couldn’t bear not to come after I got to the house, and if I’ve done wrong--” “Now, now dear” cooed Isabel, leaning over to take Annie’s hands, “what nonsense to talk of wrong; come now, dry your eyes, and smile at us, like a good girl. You are nervous and tired out with the task of tending your grandmother--that’s all--and this day in the woods will do you a world of good. Don’t let us have even the least little bit of unhappiness in it.”