With a mother’s intuition Mrs. Prescott had foreseen the probable result of Roy’s intimacy with her daughter, and nothing could please her more than to see Fanny his wife and connected with the Mason family. Consequently when she entered the room and saw Fanny’s confusion and Roy’s exultation she guessed the truth and was prepared to hear all Roy had to say, as in a straight-forward, manly way he told her what his wishes were and asked her consent. “Has she told you everything?” Mrs. Prescott said. “Your parents know it all, of course. They were a part of the drama played that summer which seems to me ages ago. Nor can I realize that I am the person who was guilty of that heartless escapade.” She was thinking of Craig Mason, while Fanny, who knew nothing of that page in her mother’s life, thought only of her father, and said, “Oh, mother, you are not sorry you married my father? You can’t be, if you love me. Where would I have been if you hadn’t married him? He was nice, I know he was.” The brave little girl, who was fighting down all her pride of family and birth, would be loyal to the father she had never known and it touched her mother closely. “I was thinking of the way I married him,” she said, sitting down by Fanny and smoothing her hair, which was still a good deal disordered from contact with Roy’s buttons and coatsleeves. “One always regrets the foolishness of youth which might have been avoided.” Turning now to Roy she continued, “When I married Judge Prescott it was his wish that Fanny should take his name, and mine to forget the past so far as possible. Your parents were abroad, but I wrote asking them to be reticent on the matter.” “And they have been,” Roy answered quickly. “I never heard of Mr. Hilton until to-day; nor of his grandmother; nor do I care how many he had, nor how they died. I dare say half of mine ought to have been hung, if the truth were known. That has nothing to do with my love for Fanny. I want her, and right off, too,—the sooner the better. Father and mother knew my business here. I talked it all over with them and they would rather have Fanny for a daughter than anyone they know. When can I take her?” He was very impetuous, and Mrs. Prescott could not repress a sigh as she looked at his flushed, eager face and remembered her own youth so far in the past. “You can have my daughter,” she said, “but not yet. She is not quite twenty and you are only twenty-two, both children in experience. You must wait a year at least; that will soon pass. I cannot spend another winter in this climate. I have tried Florida and do not like it, and have decided upon California, and Fanny will go with me. In June or July we shall visit the Yosemite, and when we return home it will be time to think of bridal festivities.”