Ah me! how real and still present the peril seemed to the girl! “You will solemnly promise me, solemnly, will you not, Stanhope, never to go there again--never--without me?” The promise was given. “I have a note,” said King, after the promise was recorded and sealed, “to show you. It came this morning. It is from Mrs. Bartlett Glow.” “Perhaps I'd rather not see it,” said Irene, a little stiffly. “Oh, there is a message to you. I'll read it.” It was dated at Newport. “MY DEAR STANHOPE,--The weather has changed. I hope it is more congenial where you are. It is horrid here. I am in a bad humor, chiefly about the cook. Don't think I'm going to inflict a letter on you. You don't deserve it besides. But I should like to know Miss Benson's address. We shall be at home in October, late, and I want her to come and make me a little visit. If you happen to see her, give her my love, and believe me your affectionate cousin, PENELOPE.” The next day they explored the wonders of the Notch, and the next were back in the serene atmosphere of the Profile House. How lovely it all was; how idyllic; what a bloom there was on the hills; how amiable everybody seemed; how easy it was to be kind and considerate! King wished he could meet a beggar at every turn. I know he made a great impression on some elderly maiden ladies at the hotel, who thought him the most gentlemanly and good young man they had ever seen. Ah! if one could always be in love and always young! They went one day by invitation, Irene and Marion and King and the artist--as if it made any difference where they went--to Lonesome Lake, a private pond and fishing-lodge on the mountain-top, under the ledge of Cannon. There, set in a rim of forest and crags, lies a charming little lake--which the mountain holds like a mirror for the sky and the clouds and the sailing hawks--full of speckled trout, which have had to be educated by skillful sportsmen to take the fly. From this lake one sees the whole upper range of Lafayette, gray and purple against the sky. On the bank is a log cabin touched with color, with great chimneys, and as luxuriously comfortable as it is picturesque. While dinner was preparing, the whole party were on the lake in boats, equipped with fishing apparatus, and if the trout had been in half as willing humor as the fisher, it would have been a bad day for them. But perhaps they apprehended that it was merely a bridal party, and they were leaping all over the lake, flipping their tails in the sun, and scorning all the visible wiles. Fish, they seemed to say, are not so easily caught as men.