* * * * * The morning was a sparkling June morning, dewy and fragrant, and the sunlight burnished the handles and pedals of the friends' bicycles standing on the piazza unheeded. It was the hour for morning practice, but Miss Hopkins slept in her chamber, and Mrs. Ellis sat in the little parlor adjoining, and thought. She did not look surprised at the maid's announcement that Mrs. Winslow begged to see her for a few moments. Mrs. Winslow was pale. She was a good sketch of discomfort on the very edge of her chair, clad in the black silk which she wore Sundays, her head crowned with her bonnet of state, and her hands stiff in a pair of new gloves. "I hope you'll excuse me not sending up a card," she began. "Cyril got me some going on a year ago, and I _thought_ I could lay my hand right on 'em, but I'm so nervous this morning I hunted all over, and they wasn't anywhere. I won't keep you. I jest wanted to ask if you picked up anything--a little red Russia-leather case--" "Was it a miniature--a miniature of my friend Miss Hopkins?" "I thought it all over, and I came to explain. You no doubt think it strange; and I can assure you that my son never let any human being look at that picture. I never knew about it myself till it was lost and he got up out of his bed--he ain't hardly able to walk--and staggered over here to look for it, and I followed him; and so he _had_ to tell me. He had it painted from a picture that came out in the papers. He felt it was an awful liberty. But--you don't know how my boy feels, Mrs. Ellis; he has worshipped that woman for years. He ain't never had a thought of anybody but her since they was children in school; and yet's he's been so modest and so shy of pushing himself forward that he didn't do a thing until I put him on to help you with this bicycle." Margaret Ellis did not know what to say. She thought of the marquis; and Mrs. Winslow poured out her story: "He ain't never said a word to me till this morning. But don't I _know_? Don't I know who looked out so careful for her investments? Don't I know who was always looking out for her interest--silent, and always keeping himself in the background? Why, she couldn't even buy a cow that he wa'n't looking round to see that she got a good one! 'Twas him saw the gardener, and kept him from buying that cow with tuberculosis, 'cause he knew about the herd. He knew by finding out. He worshipped the very cows she owned, you may say, and I've seen him patting and feeding up her dogs; it's to our house that big mastiff always goes every night. Mrs. Ellis, it ain't often that a woman gits love such as my son is offering, only he da'sn't offer it, and it ain't often a woman is loved by such a good man as my son. He ain't got any bad habits; he'll die before he wrongs anybody; and he has got the sweetest temper you ever see; and he's the tidiest man about a house you could ask, and the promptest about meals."