The straw-ride was unanimously declared to be a great success. Miss Morse brought her volume of Mérimée along and read it to her young man in the woods. Her young man for the afternoon, that is; she had no special young man. The chaperone was the beautiful Mrs. Miles Breeze, of Baltimore; she arrived suddenly, in the nick of time to go; and Vane could see that Miss Morse was much elated at being under the wing of so real a social personage. Ned Eddy was with her. When the company paired off and scattered in the woods, Vane fell to the lot of a Miss Gibbs, of Philadelphia, a still newer acquaintance to whom Miss Storrs had introduced him. Miss Gibbs had a volume of Rossetti's poems with her, and Vane read to her the "Last Confession" under the pine trees. For many a foreigner, it would have been his first. But the hearts of American young men are (very properly) bound in triple brass. Miss Gibbs also knew Miss Thomas. She seemed relieved when she gathered from Vane that Miss Storrs was an acquaintance of a few hours, and Misses Morse and Westerhouse of the morning only. Evidently, thought Vane, there were distinctions if not differences. Miss Gibbs combined much good-breeding with her fascinations; and a dangerous _savoir faire_. The next day he went to walk with a dark-haired girl in the morning, and to drive with a yellow-haired widow in the afternoon. In the evening he found himself drifting on the lake in a boat with Miss Gibbs. Any one of these beauties would have been termed, by a Frenchman, adorable; and probably he would have ventured to adore. Other boats with similar couples were scattered over the lake, no one too near another. As far as Vane could judge, it seemed to be considered the proper thing for every young man to simulate the deepest love for his companion of the hour. It was a sort of private theatrical, with the out-door night for a stage; a midsummer night's dream, of which the theme was _let's pretend we're lovers_. He was here alone with Miss Gibbs under circumstances which in France would have compelled him to marry her; and it was doubtful whether she would even remember him as an acquaintance, in the city, a few weeks later. He was glad to admit that there was something very creditable in the fact that the thing was possible. Still this trifling, this mild but continuous drugging of the affections, must have its demoralizing effect. It was part result and part cause of that same unreality. The only real thing about the hotel was the stock-ticker; and even there, the stock that it registered was water. It was all very amusing. Yet the fancy continually recurred of Miss Thomas, in this situation, though he, of all men, would have had no right to be displeased; for had she not definitely told him he had none? Still, it was hard to divest himself of a certain sense of property in her; he had mentally appropriated her for so long.