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MAUDE spent her summer vacation at Uncle Phil's,
where she was received with every demonstration
of joy by each one of the family, Uncle Phil dragging
her off at once to see the “suller hole” of his chapel,
or “synagogue,” as he called it, which was not progressing
very fast; “such hard work to get the men, and when they
do come, they won't work more than half the time, and want
such all-fired big wages, it is enough to break a feller; but
then I'm in for it, and it's got to go,” he said to Maude, who
expressed so much delight, and called him a darling man so
many times, and showed her trim, pretty ancles and dainty
white tucks and ruffles with such abandon, as she stepped
over the stones and sticks of timber, that Uncle Phil felt
“curis again at the pit of his stomach,” and did not care how
much his synagogue cost, if Maude was only pleased.

Maude did not talk to Edna quite so much as usual at
first; she was studying her closely, and trying to recall what
she had heard Georgie say of Mrs. Charlie Churchill's looks.
Then she began to lay little traps for her, and Edna fell
into some of them, and then fell out again so adroitly, that
Maude was kept in a constant fever of excitement, until one
day, early in August, when, in walking by herself up the
road which led to the hotel on the mountain, she met Jack
Heyford, who had arrived the night before, and was on his
way, he said, to call on her.

“I was up here a few years ago,” he explained, as they
walked back together, “and I retained so pleasant a remembrance
of the mountain scenery that I wanted to see it again;
so, as I could have a vacation of two weeks, I came first to

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Oakwood, but it was lonely there with Georgie gone; she's
off to Saratoga, you know, and hearing you were here, I
concluded to come too. You are stopping at a farm-house.
I have an indistinct recollection of Mr. Overton; a queer
old fellow, isn't he?”

He talked very fast, and Maude did not hear more than half
he said, for her tumultuous thoughts. If Louise Overton
were really Edna Churchill, then Jack Heyford would recognize
her, for he had been with her at the time of the accident,
and had seen her frequently in Chicago.

“Yes, I have her now,” Maude thought, as she said to
Jack. “Mr. Overton has a niece living with him, Miss Louise
Overton, a pretty little creature, whom you are sure to fall
in love with. I hardly think she could have been here when
you were at Rocky Point before.”

“No, I think not. I have no recollection of seeing a
person of that name. Pretty, is she?” Jack answered as
indifferently as if he really had no idea of meeting any
young lady at the farm-house, except Maude herself, and
that his sole object that morning, was to call upon the girl
chatting so gayly at his side, and telling him how pretty and
charming and sweet Miss Overton was, and how he was
certain to lose his heart at once.

“Suppose I have lost it already,” Jack said, glancing at
Maude, whose cheeks flushed a little, and who tossed her head
airily and made him some saucy reply.

Of all the young men she had known, Maude liked Jack
Heyford the best. She had thought him a little awkward
and rusty when she first saw him at Oakwood, but had recognized
through all the genuine worth and goodness of the
man, and felt that he was true as steel. He was greatly improved
since that time, and Maude was not unconscious of the
attention she was attracting as she sauntered slowly on with
the handsome stranger at her side. Edna saw them coming.

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Indeed, she had watched all the morning for Jack, for she
knew he was to have reached the Mountain House the night
before, and that he would call on Miss Somerton that morning,
and be introduced to her; and her conscience smote
her for the part she was acting.

“If Uncle Phil was not so foolish about it, I should tell
Maude at once,” she thought, as after Maude's departure for
a walk she made her toilet, in expectation of Jack Heyford's
call.

She had schooled herself so well that when at last Jack
came and was presented to her, she received him without
the least sign that this was not their first meeting; and
Maude, who watched them curiously, felt chagrined and disappointed
that neither manifested the slightest token of recognition,
but met as entire strangers.

“It's funny, when I am so sure,” she thought; and for
several days she lived in a constant fever of excitement and
perplexity.

Regularly each day Jack came to the cottage, and stayed
so long that Becky suspected him to be “Miss Maude's
beau;” while Ruth Gardner, who was there frequently to
help make up the game of croquet, interpreted his manner
differently, and guessed that while he jested with and teased
Miss Somerton, his preference was for Edna, who was
evidently bent upon not encouraging him in the least, or
giving him a chance to speak.

But Jack had his chance at last, on a morning when
Maude and Ruth, with Maria Belknap and the Unitarian
minister, were playing croquet upon the lawn behind the
farm-house, and Edna was sitting alone on the stoop of the
front door. Uncle Phil was gone, and as Aunt Becky was
busy with her dinner in the kitchen, there was nothing in
the way, and Jack told his story in that frank, outspoken
way which characterized all he did. It was not like Charlie's

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wooing; it lacked the impetuous, boyish fire which refused
to be denied, and yet Edna knew that the love offered to
her now was worth far more than Charlie's love had been;
that with Jack Heyford she should rest secure, knowing that
no shadow of wrong had ever soiled his garments. And
for a moment she hesitated, and thought of Annie, whom
she loved, and looked up into the honest eyes regarding her
so eagerly, and coming gradually to have a sorry, anxious
expression as she did not answer.

“Won't you speak to me, Edna?” he said. “Won't you
answer me?”

“Oh, Mr. Heyford,” she cried at last. “I am so sorry
you have told me this, for I don't believe I can say yes, at
least not now. Give me till to-morrow, and then if I find
that I can be to you what your wife ought to be, I will.”

Jack did not press her further, and when the croquet
party came round from the lawn, they found Edna sitting
there alone, and Mr. Heyford gone back to the Mountain
House.

That night, when Uncle Phil came from the post-office,
he brought a letter from Aunt Jerry, enclosing one from
Roy, who had written from a little inn among the Scottish
hills. It was only a pleasant, friendly letter, telling of his
journeyings and his mother's health, which did not seem to
improve; but it sealed Jack Heyford's fate.

Edna had no thought of ever marrying Roy, but she
could not marry Jack, and she sat down to tell him so on
paper, feeling that she could do it in this way with less of
pain and embarrassment to them both. And as she wrote,
Roy's letter lay open beside her, and Maude came bounding
up the stairs and stood at her side, almost before she
knew that she was coming. With a quick motion she put
Roy's letter away, but not until Maude's eyes had glanced
at and recognized the handwriting.

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“Eureka,” she whispered softly; and then, to Edna's utter
astonishment, Maude knelt down beside her, and putting her
arms around her neck, said to her: “Dotty, don't be angry,
will you? I always find out things, and you are Edna
Churchill.”

Edna felt as if she was suffocating. Her throat closed
spasmodically, so that she could not speak, and for an instant
she sat motionless, staring at Maude, who, frightened
at the expression of her face, kissed her lips, and forehead,
and cheek, and said:

“Don't take it so hard. Nobody shall know your secret
from me; nobody, I assure you. I have guessed it ever so
long. It was the jet which brought it to me. Roy spoke of
his sister once last winter, and said he had sent her some
ornaments of jet, and then it flashed over me that my little
Dotty was the girl in whom I had been so interested ever
since I first heard of her. Speak to me, Dot. You are not
offended?”

“No,” Edna gasped at last. “Only it came so sudden.
I am glad you know. I wanted you to know it, it seemed
so like a miserable lie I was living all the time.”

And then the two girls talked a long, long time, of Edna's
early life, of Charlie, and of Roy, whose letter Edna showed
to Maude, and of whom she never tired of hearing. Thus
it came about that Edna's note to Jack was not finished, and
Edna gave him his answer verbally the next morning, when,
punctual to the appointed time, he came and walked with
her alone down to the clump of chestnut trees, which grew
near the roadside. Something in Edna's face, when he first
saw it that morning, prepared him in part, but the blow cut
deep and hurt him cruelly. Still without love, Jack did not
want any woman for his wife, and when Edna said, “I respect
and like you more than any man I know, but cannot
find in my heart the love you ought to have in return for

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what you give,” he did not urge her, but took both her
hands in his, and kissing them reverently, said:

“You have dealt fairly with me, Edna, and I thank you for
it, and will be your friend just as I always have been. Let
there be no difference between us, and in proof thereof, kiss
me once. I will never ask it again.”

He stooped down to her, and she gave the boon he asked,
and said to him, in a choking voice:

“God bless you, Mr. Heyford, and you may one day find
a wife tenfold more worthy of you than I can ever be.”

They walked slowly back to the house, and found Maude
waiting for them, with her mallet in hand, and Uncle Phil in
close custody, with a most lugubrious expression on his face.
Maude, who was nearly croquet mad, had waylaid the old
man, and captured him, and coaxed a mallet into his hand,
and was leading him in triumph to the playground, when
Jack and Edna came up, and she insisted upon their joining
her.

“A four-handed game was so much nicer,” she said; “and
Mr. Heyford and Uncle Phil were so fairly matched,” and she
looked so jaunty in her short, coquettish dress, and pleaded
so skilfully, that Jack took the offered mallet, and, sad as was
his heart just then, he found a space in which to think how
pretty Miss Somerton was, and how gracefully she managed
her mallet, and how small and well-shaped was the little foot
she poised so skilfully upon the balls when bent upon croqueting.

Maude Somerton was very beautiful, and there was a
power in her sunny blue eyes, and a fascination in her coaxing,
winning ways, which few men could resist. Even sturdy
Uncle Phil felt their influence, and under the witching spell
of her beauty did things for which, when he was alone, he
called himself “a silly old fool, to be so carried away with a
girl's pranks.”

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Maude sported the first short dress which had appeared in
Rocky Point, and she looked so odd, and pretty withal, in her
girlish costume of white, trimmed with a pale buff, and she
wore such stylish gaiters, and showed them so much with
their silken tassels, that Uncle Phil confessed again to a
“curis feeling in his stomach,” and was not sure whether it
was quite the thing for an old chap like him to let his eyes
rest often on those little feet, and that trim, lithe form, which
flitted so airily around the wickets, and made such havoc with
the enemy's balls. It surely was not well for a young man
like Jack to look at her often, he decided, especially when
arrayed in that short gown, which made her look so like a
little girl, and showed her feet so plainly.

They had a merry game, and Jack was interested in spite
of himself, and accepted Uncle Phil's invitation to stay to
dinner, and felt a queer little throb in his veins when Maude,
acknowledging Edna and himself victors, insisted upon crowning
them as such, and wove a wreath of myrtle for Edna's
hair, while for him she gathered a bouquet, and fastened it in
his button-hole.

She had said to Edna, “I shall tell Mr. Heyford that I
know your secret. I must talk to somebody about it.”
And seizing the opportunity when Edna was in the house consulting
with Becky about the dessert, she told him what she
had discovered, and waxed so enthusiastic over “little Dot,”
and arranged the bouquet in his button-hole a little more to
her liking, and stood, with her glowing face and fragrant
breath, so near to him, and did it all so innocently, that Jack
began to wonder he had never before observed “how very
beautiful Miss Somerton was, and what pleasant ways she
had,” and when he went back to the Mountain House at
night, his heart, though very sore and sad, was not utterly
crushed and desolate.

He played croquet the next day and the next, sometimes

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with Edna for his partner, but oftener with Maude, who, being
the champion player, undertook to teach him and correct
some of his faults. He must not poke, nor stand behind,
nor strike too hard, nor go after other balls when he could
as well make his wicket first. And Jack tried to learn, and
do his teacher justice, and became at last almost as interested
in the game as Maude herself, whom he sometimes beat.
And when at the end of his two weeks' vacation he went
back to his business in New York, he seemed much like
himself, and Edna felt that he was bearing his disappointment
bravely, and that in time life would be to him just what it had
been before he thought of her.

Maude's departure followed close upon Jack's, and as she
bade Edna good-by, she said, “I shall never rest, Dotty,
till I see you at Leighton, where you belong. But I want
you to go there first as Louise Overton. Take my word for
it, you will succeed better so, with la mère, and possibly with
le frère too. When they come home I am going to manage
for you. See now if I don't. Adieu.”