"The bigger the better," she exclaimed brightly. "I hoped I should find you out here, and as I see the tea is still hot perhaps Edith will let us join you. Philip and I have been walking and talking until we are really tired." "I am entranced with all this," Hamlen said, turning to Edith. "I had no idea, when I paraded my few acres at Bermuda, that I was competing with an estate like Sagamore. I wonder some one didn't rebuke me for my presumption!" "Isn't that a pretty compliment!" Marian cried. "You have put yourself into every inch of your beautiful place, Philip; Harry and I have only done that to a very small extent. It is beautiful, I admit, and I love it just as I love the beauties with which you have surrounded yourself at home." "It makes little difference, after all, where one finds it, so long as it is beauty," Hamlen replied. "'The dawn is my Assyria; the sunset and moonrise my Paphos and unimaginable realms of faerie; broad noon shall be my England of the senses and the understanding; the night shall be my Germany of mystic philosophy and dreams.' I used to think Emerson must have written that in Bermuda, but it might have been written here." Edith caught the expression on Cosden's face and almost laughed. "What's the use?" he whispered to her without being detected. "This pace is too swift for me! He reeled that off as easily as I could the latest quotations on copper!" "Oh, Philip!" Mrs. Thatcher exclaimed, "I can't tell you what it means to me to see you yourself again after that awful shock you gave me at Bermuda! Truly, when we left you behind us I gave up hope." "What hope there was you took away with you, so I was forced to follow." "Come, Cossie--Connie--," Edith stumbled,--"if I'm to call you by your given name you'll have to change it to something reasonable,--this is no place for us." "Don't let us drive you away," Marian protested. "That's all right; we want to be driven away. If we stay longer, and Mr. Hamlen talks like that, Mr. Cosden will become sentimental.--Bye, bye." Mrs. Thatcher and Hamlen watched them as they strolled leisurely up the path, Edith swinging her parasol and Cosden walking meekly beside her. Finally Marian turned to him and laughed. "What a dance that girl is leading him!" "Do you think she cares for him?" "In her way; but if he marries her he will have earned her!--He went down to Bermuda on purpose to become engaged to Merry." "He did!" Hamlen exclaimed, surprised; "why, they were never together when I saw them." "Nor often at other times. Of course, it was ridiculous,--but with you, Philip, she'll be the happiest girl in all the world." His eyes dropped quickly as she turned the conversation, and the expression on his face completely changed. "You are wrong, Marian," he protested; "no happiness can ever come to any woman through me."