Transcriber’s Note: Minor errors in punctuation and formatting have been silently corrected. Please see the transcriber’s note at the end of this text for details regarding the handling of any textual issues encountered during its preparation. This version of the text cannot represent certain typographical effects. Italics are delimited with the ‘_’ character as _italic_. The full-page illustrations are referred to, in the list provided, by a quote from the text, and the page reference is to the quote, rather than the position of the illustration in the text. In some cases, these were re-positioned to fall nearer the scene referenced. These illustrations also had no captions. They are distinguished, here, by the first few words of the quoted text. The Travelling Thirds By Gertrude Atherton Author of “Rulers of Kings” “The Conqueror” “The Bell in the Fog” etc. [Illustration] LONDON AND NEW YORK HARPER & BROTHERS PUBLISHERS 1905 Copyright, 1905, by HARPER & BROTHERS. _All rights reserved._ Published October, 1905. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ The Travelling Thirds I The California cousin of the Lyman T. Moultons—a name too famous to be shorn——stood apart from the perturbed group, her feet boyishly asunder, her head thrown back. Above her hung the thick white clusters of the acacia,[1] drooping abundantly, opaque and luminous in the soft masses of green, heavy with perfume. All Lyons seemed to have yielded itself to the intoxicating fragrance of its favorite tree. Footnote 1: The acacia of Europe is identical with the American locust. In the Place Carnot, at least, there was not a murmur. The Moultons had hushed in thought their four variations on the aggressive American key, although perhaps insensible to the voluptuous offering of the grove. Mrs. Moulton, had her senses responded to the sweet and drowsy afternoon, would have resented the experience as immoral; and as it was her pale-blue gaze rested disapprovingly on the rapt figure of her husband’s second cousin. The short skirt and the covert coat of ungraceful length, its low pockets always inviting the hands of its owner, had roused more than once her futile protest, and to-day they seemed to hang limp with a sense of incongruity beneath the half-closed eyes and expanded nostrils of the young Californian.