He kept as far as he was able his compact of expecting nothing of her, except of course that he couldn't avoid expecting that their arrangement would lead in the natural course to marriage. She had met him more than halfway in that, agreeing to an earlier date than he had thought compatible with the ritual of engagements in the Best Society. She had managed, however, that Peter should present her with her summer freedom: the engagement was not even to be announced until their return to town. And in the meantime Peter was to find a house. He had offered her travel for that first year. Europe, which he had scarcely glimpsed, glittered and allured. But travel, Eunice let him know, went much better when you had a place to come back to. He saw at once how right was everything she did. Well, then, a house on Fillmore Avenue? "Oh--shall we be so rich as that, Peter?" He divined some embarrassment in her as to the scale in which they were to live. "We'll want something in the country, too," she reminded him. "I've a couple of options at Maplemont----" "Oh, Maplemont----" She liked that also, he perceived. "And a place in Florida. Lessing and I bought it the winter the children had the diphtheria. They've a very pretty bungalow; we could put up something like it for ourselves--if you wouldn't mind my sister occasionally. Ellen isn't happy at hotels." "Mind! with all you're giving me! You won't think it's just the money, Peter;" she had a very charming hesitancy about it. "It's what money stands for, beauty, and suitability--and--everything." He was very tender with her. "It's not that I have such a pile of it either," he assured her, "though I turn over a great deal in the course of a year. It's easier making money than people think." "Easier for everybody?" There was a certain eagerness in the look and voice. "Easier for those who know how. I'm only forty, and I've learned; there's not much I couldn't get if I set about it. It's a kind of a gift, perhaps, like painting or music, but there's a great deal to be learned, too." "And some haven't the gift to learn, perhaps." For some reason she sighed.... He was turning all this over in his mind when suddenly Ellen recalled him. "Have you told Clarice yet?" "I mean to, Sunday, if you don't mind my not coming down to you. Miss Goodward is spending the week end at Maplemont, and by staying at Julian's----" "Of _course_." Ellen sympathized. "I shall want to know what Clarice says." She never did know exactly, for when Clarice gave Peter her congratulations in the terrace garden after dinner, she missed, extraordinarily for her, the felicitous note. "I'm so happy for Eunice, you can't imagine," she insisted. "I've always said we've none of us known what Eunice can do until she's had her opportunity. And now with all the background you can give her---- You'll see!"