“Before anything has been accomplished?” her mother said, “Have we spent the summer in this dull place for nothing? Remember you will soon be _passée_. People now say you are older than you are, you have been before the public so long. You cannot expect twenty more offers. If you get _one_, and it is the right one, I shall be glad. You once told me you would accept Mr. Mason is he proposed;—can you not bring him to do so or have you lost your skill?” This decided Helen. Craig and his mother were going to Boston the next morning on the early train, his mother to stay and Craig to return, and when that afternoon Craig suggested a drive she assented readily. “I shall not be back for a few days,” he said, “and by that time it may be cold and rainy. We ought to improve this fine weather. I have scarcely seen you for a week.” It was a glorious September day, with that stillness in the air and that haze upon the hills which early autumn brings, and Helen wondered at the feeling which oppressed her. “I used to like such days, but this one makes me homesick and shivery,” she said, as she arranged her hat and buttoned her jacket and gloves. On the terrace below she heard Mark giving some orders to Jeff and for a moment she held fast to the dressing bureau to steady herself. She had not reached the stage of young ladyhood which requires stimulants every day, but she knew the use of them and going to a bottle labeled brandy she poured out more than she had ever taken before at one time and drank it. “That will steady my nerves;” she thought, but her step was not as elastic as usual when she went out to where Craig was waiting for her, with Mark standing beside him.