But to his eyes the girl he was learning to glorify presented as fair an exterior in the garish day, and the reality of her beauty became a fixed fact in his consciousness, and his fancy had already begun to endow her with angelic qualities. With all her vanity, even sorrowful Edith would have laughed heartily at his ideal of her. It was one of the hardest ordeals of his life to take the money she paid him, and she saw and wondered at his repugnance. "You will never get rich," she said, "if you are so prodigal in work, and so spare in your charges." "I would rather not take anything," he said dubiously, holding the money, as if it were a coal of fire, between his thumb and finger. "Then I must find some one who will do business on business principles," she said coldly. "If the fellow has any sentimental nonsense about him, I'll soon cure that," she thought. Arden colored, thrust his money carelessly into his pocket as if it were of no account, and said briefly, "Good-morning." But when alone he put the money in the innermost part of his pocketbook, and when his father asked him for some of it, he sternly answered: "No, sir, not a cent." Nor did he spend it himself; why he kept it could scarcely have been explained. He was simply acting according to the impulses of a morbid romantic nature that had been suddenly and deeply impressed. The mother's quick eye detected a change in him and she asked: "What do you think of our new neighbor?" "Mother," said he fervently, "she is an angel." "My poor boy," said she anxiously, "take care. Don't let your fancy run away with you." "Oh," said he with assumed indifference, "one can have a decided opinion of a good thing as well as a bad thing, without making a fool of one's self." But the mother saw with a half-jealous pang that her son's heart was awaking to a new and stronger love than her own. Mrs. Allen with Zell and Laura was to come by the boat that evening, and Edith's heart yearned after them as her kindred. Now that she had had a little experience of loneliness and isolation, she deeply regretted her former harshness and impatience, saying to herself, "It is harder for them than for me. They don't like the country, and don't care anything about a garden," and she purposed to be very gentle and long-suffering. If good resolutions were only accomplished certainties as soon as made, how different life would be! Arden had ordered a close carriage that she might go down and meet them, and had agreed to bring up their trunks and boxes in his large wagon.