“Who is she?” asks Mrs. Cardigan, with the interest that some women are quick to feel in any other woman who is reputed attractive. While this question is answered, and Eric is sounding the praises of Miss Tyrrell and her family, the supper-bell rings, and we go in with appetites sharpened by the fresh mountain-air. After supper, the piazza is not less attractive than by day, and, with shawls wrapped around us, we adjourn thither. The stars are brilliant, and against the steel-blue sky the dark crest of Rich Mountain is distinctly outlined. “Don’t you wish we were there _now_?” asks Sylvia, wistfully. “How silent and awesome it must be!” “Some of us don’t fancy awesome things,” says Charley, who is seated on the steps smoking. “I prefer my present quarters very much.” “You have no poetry in your soul,” says the young lady. “Mr. Lanier, now—I am sure _he_ would like to be there.” She glances round as she speaks, but there is no Mr. Lanier to answer the jesting words. His place is vacant, so likewise is that of Mrs. Cardigan. At the far end of the piazza two dark figures in close proximity are dimly visible—star-gazing, no doubt. Eric laughs. “‘Now, gallant Saxon, hold thine own!’” he says to Sylvia. “There seem suspicious signs of treachery and desertion in the camp.” “Two things which one should never condescend to notice,” she answers, carelessly. Notwithstanding this sentiment she expresses herself with less reserve on the subject when we are alone for the night. “Have you ever seen anything to equal the manner in which Mrs. Cardigan is trying to flirt with Raph Lanier?” she asks. “She has given up Eric as a hopeless subject, and turned her batteries on the other.” “It is certainly a bold invasion of the rights of property,” I say, “considering what an admirer of yours he has been for some time. No woman with self-respect would act in such a manner—but Mrs. Cardigan has little of that quality. Nevertheless, you have yourself, not her attractions, to blame for Mr. Lanier’s desertion.” “Perhaps I have,” she says, carelessly. “I know that I could bring him back by a word—but I don’t think I shall speak the word. I have lost any faint liking I may ever have had for him, and as for making a cold-blooded marriage of convenience—I could not do _that_ if my life depended on it.” “Take care!” I say, warningly. “I grant that Mr. Lanier does not appear to great advantage on a tour of this description—he is, in fact, altogether out of his element. But you don’t expect to spend your life in Arcadia, and when you go back to the world, where fine dresses, fine jewels, fine equipages, will assume again their place of first importance, you may be sorry for having discarded a man who represents all these things.”