Wynne was too confused to answer this sally, although he wanted to say something about the cruelty of taking him into the ball-room. His confusion increased Mrs. Wilson's amusement. "I think I should like to be in at the death," she said. "She is coming down to stay with me next week. Come down and make love to her. I won't tell about the girl you carried out of church in your arms." More and more disconcerted and self-conscious, Maurice could only stammer that Mrs. Wilson flattered him if she supposed that Miss Morison would tolerate any love-making on his part. "You are adorable when you blush like that," was the reply which he got. "I have almost a mind to set you to make love to me. However, that wouldn't be fair. I will take it out in seeing you and her. You must surely come down." Maurice regarded the invitation as merely part of Mrs. Wilson's badinage, but in due time it was formally repeated by note. He opened the letter at the breakfast table, and was advised by his cousin to accept. "Mrs. Wilson," she commented, "is like a banjo, more exciting than refined, but she isn't bad-hearted. She has the old Boston blood and traditions behind her." "They are sometimes rather far behind," interpolated Mr. Staggchase dryly. "She wasn't a Beauchester, you know. However, she has her ancestors safe in their graves so that they can't escape her." Mrs. Staggchase smiled good-naturedly at the little fling at her own family pretensions. "You are wicked this morning, Fred," was her reply. "Elsie is something of a sport on the ancestral tree; but she is worth visiting. Berenice Morison is going down there sometime soon. Perhaps she will be there with you, Maurice." "I thought," Mr. Staggchase observed, "that old Mrs. Morison didn't approve of Mrs. Wilson." "Nobody approves of Elsie," was Mrs. Staggchase's calm reply. "I'm sure I don't; but after all she is a sort of cousin of Berenice, and she can't very well refuse to visit her. Really, there is nothing bad about Elsie. She is startling, and she certainly does things which are bad form. That's half of it because she married as she did." Nothing more was said, and Maurice kept his own counsel in regard to the fact that he knew that Miss Morison was to be his fellow-guest. He was full of wild hopes. He reproached himself that he was wrong to forget that Berenice was rich and he was poor; yet not for all his reproaches could he keep himself from feeling Mrs. Wilson had not seemed to see any insurmountable obstacle to his wooing; that she had appeared rather to be ready to help his suit. He must not, of course, try to win Berenice; yet he was going to Mrs. Wilson's to meet her, to be with her, to revel in the delicious pleasure of hoping, of fearing, of loving.