She shrugged her graceful shoulders with an air of impatience, as if annoyed to find herself so conspicuous, while her darkly fringed lids drooped over her glorious eyes, hiding the wistful look which had suddenly crept into them. “The night is lovely, and the band is playing delightfully; let us go out and wander about the grounds for a little while,” Lord Carrol said, after a moment of silence, during which sweet, enticing strains came floating toward them on the evening air. She took the arm he offered her, her heart throbbing so wildly that she feared he would detect it, and they passed down the steps and away from the crowd on the veranda, some of whom smiled to hide their envy, others indulgently, as if upon a pair of lovers. “I suppose this will be our last night in this charming place,” the young man said, as they slowly wended their way along a sheltered avenue. She looked up with a slight start at the word “our.” He noticed it, and smiled. “I said ‘our,’ because I, too, shall leave on the afternoon express to-morrow. I have business in New York which will occupy me for a week or more.” Josephine flushed with pleasure at this, for she felt sure that the “business” was only a pretext. Her vanity led her to believe that Long Branch would be nothing to him without her companionship, and that he would go to New York merely to pass the interval of time which would elapse before he would go to Yonkers to spend the promised week with them. “Oh!” she thought, “if he would but speak a single word to commit himself that night, she could go away in the morning with a light and happy heart.” But he had never hinted of love for her; he had accompanied her and her mother almost everywhere they had been, often showing Mrs. Richards more attention than herself. He had danced with her, rode with her, walked with her, and no word beyond the most commonplace expressions of friendship had ever fallen from his lips. Sometimes she had thought that he was drawn to them more than to any one else simply because he had discovered them to be of English extraction, and felt more freedom and more in sympathy with them on that account. But she knew, too, that he admired her for her beauty, and she certainly had exerted herself more than she had ever done in her life before to be not only entertaining, but gentle, and winning, and womanly, and she kept hoping that a crisis would come before they left for home. They wandered on and on, the moonlight streaming upon them through the overarching branches of the trees, and making lace-like patterns upon the smoothly graveled walk at their feet, and he talked only of yesterday’s boating, yesterday’s racing—of anything save what her heart was craving to hear.