"Well," Mrs. Pendomer reflected, "I dare say it is best, upon the whole, you shouldn't. And now you must excuse me, for I am leaving for the Ullwethers' to-day, and I shan't ever be invited to Matocton again, and I must tell my maid to pack up. She is a little fool and it will break her heart to be leaving Pilkins. All human beings are tediously alike. But, allowing ample time for her to dispose of my best lingerie and of her unavoidable lamentations, I ought to make the six-forty-five. I have noticed that one usually does--somehow," said Mrs. Pendomer, and seemed to smack of allegories. And yet it may have been because she knew--as who knew better?--something of that mischief's nature which was now afoot. IV The colonel burned the malefic letters that afternoon. Indeed, the episode set him to ransacking the desk in which Patricia had found them--a desk which, as you have heard, was heaped with the miscellaneous correspondence of the colonel's father dating back a half-century and more. Much curious matter the colonel discovered there, for "Wild Will" Musgrave's had been a full-blooded career. And over one packet of letters, in particular, the colonel sat for a long while with an unwontedly troubled face. PART SIX - BYWAYS "Cry _Kismet!_ and take heart. Eros is gone, Nor may we follow to that loftier air Olympians breathe. Take heart, and enter where A lighter Love, vine-crowned, laughs i' the sun, Oblivious of tangled webs ill-spun By ancient wearied weavers, for it may be His guidance leads to lovers of such as we And hearts so credulous as to be won. "Cry _Kismet!_ Put away vain memories Of all old sorrows and of all old joys, And learn that life is never quite amiss So long as unreflective girls and boys Remember that young lips were meant to kiss, And hold that laughter is a seemly noise." PAUL VANDERHOFFEN. _Egeria Answers._ I Patricia sat in the great maple-grove that stands behind Matocton, and pondered over a note from her husband, who was in Lichfield superintending the appearance of the July number of the _Lichfield Historical Association's Quarterly Magazine_. Mr. Charteris lay at her feet, glancing rapidly over a lengthy letter, which was from his wife, in Richmond. The morning mail was just in, and Patricia had despatched Charteris for her letters, on the plea that the woods were too beautiful to leave, and that Matocton, in the unsettled state which marks the end of the week in a house-party, was intolerable.