“How do you find me, Sir?” she asked of her cousin.

“Radiant, rosy, and rarely arrayed.”

“I see that your affections are to be won, and I proceed accordingly, by making myself charming, in the first place.  And now, will you be cheered, but not inebriated, here under the trees, in company with dainty cheese-cakes compounded by these hands, and jelly of Helen Heath’s moulding, and automatic trifles that caught an ordaining glimpse of Mrs. Laudersdale’s eye and rushed madly together to become almond-pasty?”

“With a method in their madness, I hope.”

“Yes, all the almonds not on one side.”

“In company with cheese-cakes, jelly, and pasty, simply,—­I should have claret and crackers at home, Capua willing.  Will it pay?”

“You shall have Port here, when Mrs. Laudersdale comes.”

“Not old enough to be crusty yet, Kate,” said her husband.

“Very good, for you, John!”

“Mrs. Laudersdale is your housekeeper?” asked her cousin.

“Mrs. Laudersdale?  That is rich!  But I should never dare to tell her.  Our housekeeper?  Our cynosure!  She is our argent-lidded Persian Girl,—­our serene, imperial Eleanore;—­

  “’Whene’er she moves,
  The Samian Here rises, and she speaks
  A Meinnon smitten with the morning sun.’”

“Oh, indeed!  And this is a conventicle of young matrimonial victims to practise cookery in seclusion, upon which I have blundered?”

“If the fancy pleases you, yes.  There they are.”

And hereon followed a series of necessary introductions.

Mr. Roger Raleigh sat with both arms leaning on the table before him, and wondering which of the ladies, half whose names he had not heard, was the Samian Here,—­if any of them was,—­and if,—­and if;——­and here Mr. Roger Raleigh’s reflections went wandering back to the lakeside path and its vision.  Not inopportunely at this moment, a white garment, which, it is unnecessary to say, he had long ago seen advancing, fluttered down the opposite path, and she herself approached.

“Ah! Al fresco?” said the pleasantest voice in the world.

“And isn’t it charming?” asked Mrs. McLean.  “Imagine us with tables spread outside the door in Fifth Avenue, in Chestnut Street, or on the Common!”

“Even then the arabesque would be wanting,” said she, trailing a long branch of the wild grape-vine, with its pale and delicately fragrant blooms, along the snowy board.  “Are the cheese-cakes a success, Mrs. McLean?  I didn’t dine, and am famished.—­I see that you have at last heard from your cousin,” she added, in an undertone.

“Yes; let me pre—­Roger!”

Quickly frustrating any such presentation, Mr. Roger Raleigh half turned, and, bowing, said,—­

“I believe I have had the pleasure of meeting Mrs. Laudersdale before.”

Her haughtiness would have frozen any one else.  She bent with the least possible inclination, and sat down upon a stump that immediately became a throne.  He resumed his former position, and drummed lightly on the table, while waiting to be served.  In less complete repose than she had previously seen him, Mrs. Laudersdale now examined anew the individual before her.