But that afternoon when he went into No. 15 for his tea and for a chance to look at Frederica, and tease her, and feel her frank arm over his shoulder, he was very silent. They were in the sitting-room, Mrs. Payton having tactfully withdrawn to the entry outside of Morty's room. "When I was a young lady," she told Miss Carter, "I used to receive Mr. Payton in the back parlor, and Mama always sat in the front parlor. But Mama was very old-fashioned--_I_ believe in the new ideas! And then, after all, Mr. Weston is so much older than Freddy--oh, dear me! What a blessing it was to have him fall in love with her!" "Mother is going round," Fred told her lover, as she handed him his tea, "saying, 'Now lettest thou thy servant ...!' She's so ecstatic over our engagement." "I'm rather ecstatic myself," he said; "Fred--I am a highway robber." "Be still!" she said; and gave him another lump of sugar. "I love you," he said. "But you--no, it isn't fair; it isn't fair." She took his teacup from him and snuggled down beside him; "I'm satisfied," she said. The sense of her content stabbed him. She ought to have so much more than content. He had told her so often enough, in those two months of standing out against his own heart; he told her so when, at last, he yielded. But when he said it now, she would not listen. "I tell you, _I'm_ satisfied!" She dropped her head on his shoulder, and hummed a little to herself. How was a man to break through such content! "But I _will_!" he told himself. THE END End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Rising Tide, by Margaret Deland