Never before had a journey by steam seemed to him as long as this one. He counted the blocks as they passed beneath him, and rejoiced to think that every minute lessened the distance between him and the young girl who was now occupying a large share of his thoughts. As he approached the Van Kuren mansion, he strained his eyes to look over the hedge that separated the lawn from the highway, hoping that he might catch a glimpse of Laura somewhere in the grounds. He was not disappointed. Just as he passed through the gate, he caught sight of some one seated in the summer-house—the very one in which he had had his long talk on the occasion of his first visit—and then it seemed to him that this some one looked up for a moment, recognized him, and then became absorbed in the pages of a book. It was Laura; but although his feet sounded noisily on the gravel-walk she did not look up, and when at last he stopped, a little embarrassed, at the step of the summer-house, lifted his hat, and addressed her by name, she started as suddenly as if she had been awakened from a dream, and then, so it seemed to him, recognized him with much surprise. She asked him to sit down, which he did, placing himself at the very edge of a rustic bench and holding his hat awkwardly over his knees. Then she laid her book down on the table in the middle of the house, with the leaves open at the place where she had been reading, a proceeding which somehow gave to her visitor the impression that she hoped to resume it again at an early moment. This, taken in connection with a certain cool reserve in her manner, which was altogether different from what he had experienced at her hands before, acted like a cold chill upon the young man—which was precisely the effect which she had reckoned on. The truth is that Laura, like a great many of the most charming of her sex, was a natural born coquette, and, having noticed how eagerly her young admirer responded to her advances on the occasion of their first meeting, she took pleasure in treating him now with a degree of indifference which led him to fear that he had in some way managed to offend her.