“There they come down the lawn,” suddenly cried my grandfather. “Charley, where is the glass? Thank you. They are getting into the boat,—Mrs. Poythress is in,—now for Lucy,—she is in,—and now Mr. P. there! The first flash of the oars! They are off! Charley,” added he, handing the glass to Mrs. Carter, “did you think to send word to the Herr to come, as the Poythresses were to spend the day with us? Ah, I remember, he could not come. Well, Lucy and Mr. Smith will have to entertain us to-day.” “Ah,” sighed Mary, “in that boat sits my real rival. How could I have thought such a thing of dear Alice?” When the boat neared the shore, the gentlemen (there were only three at Elmington at this time,—my grandfather, Charley, and the Don) went to meet the guests. Mrs. Carter went also, to greet Mrs. Poythress; and Alice, too; saying, when she saw her mother leaning on Mr. Whacker’s arm, that she thought it prudent to look after her father’s interests, when her mother was carrying on so in his absence. I am afraid, however, that she did not keep a very strict watch on her mother; for she and Charley were soon considerably in the rear of the rest, and engaged, as was obvious to Mary (who remained on the piazza), in a very earnest conversation, the subject of which it hardly needed a woman’s instinct to divine. She felt sure that her friend was describing to Charley her interview with the Don; and as Alice grew more and more earnest in her manner and vehement in her gestures, her curiosity rose at last into a sickening intensity, for a voice whispered in her ear that she, somehow, was deeply concerned in what those two were saying. She forgot where she was, forgot the girls seated near her, saw only Charley and Alice; and leaning farther and farther forward, as they receded, strove to drink in with her soulful eyes the words that her ears could not hear. “Gracious, Mary, what is the matter?” She had seen Alice stop and turn towards Charley and gaze at him with an almost tragic earnestness. Then, suddenly springing towards him and seizing his wrist, she had given him a pull that shook his equilibrium. With nerves unstrung by the harassing doubts of the last few weeks, and wrought up to the highest pitch of painful curiosity as to the subject matter of the singular interview between Alice and the Don in the Argo that morning,—seeing Alice detailing that interview to Charley,—when she witnessed Alice’s violent illustration of what must have occurred between her and the Don, Mary had leaped, with a cry, from her seat. “Gracious, Mary, what is the matter?” At these words of her neighbor Mary sank back in her chair with a vivid blush and a confused smile, and was silent. “You frightened me so! I thought some one had fallen out of the boat, perhaps. What was the matter?” “I am sure I can’t tell; I suppose I must have been dreaming.”