“But I didn’t expect you before the sun.”

“To pass the day, and find you absent and the breakfast-table not cleared away.”

“My dear Roger, we have not quite taken our habits yet.  As soon as the country-air shall have wakened and made over Helen and Mrs. Laudersdale, you will find us ready for company at daybreak.”

“What a passion for ‘company’!  I shall not be surprised some day to receive cards for your death-bed.”

“Friends and relatives invited to attend?  No, Roger, you mustn’t be naughty.  You shall receive cards for my dinner-party before we go, if you won’t come without; for we have innumerable friends in town, already.”

“Happy woman!”

“What’s that?  A newspaper?  A newspaper!  How McLean will chuckle!” And she seized the sheet which Mrs. Laudersdale had abandoned in sweeping from the room.

“Is there a Mr. Laudersdale?  Where is he?” asked Mr. Raleigh, as he leaned against the window.

“Who?” asked his cousin, deep in a paragraph.

“Mr. Laudersdale.  Where is he?”

“Oh! between his four planks, I suppose,” she replied, thinking of the Soundboat’s berth, which probably contained the gentleman designated.

“Between his four planks,” repeated Mr. Raleigh, in a musing tone, entirely misinterpreting her, and to this little accident owing nearly thirteen years’ unhappiness.

“She must have married early,” he continued.

“Oh, fabulously early,” replied Mrs. McLean, between the lines she read.  “She is Creole, I believe.  She is perfect.  The women are as infatuated about her as the men.  Here’s Helen Heath been dawdling round the table all the morning for the sake of chatting to her while she breakfasts.  I don’t know why, I’m sure; the woman’s charming, but she’s too lazy even to talk.  McLean!  Another flurry in France.”

And after shaking hands with Mr. Raleigh, that worthy seized the proffered paper and vanished behind it, leaving to his wife the entertainment of her cousin, which duty she seemed by no means in haste to assume, preferring to remain and vex her husband with a thousand little teasing arts.  Meanwhile Mr. Raleigh proceeded to take that office upon himself, by crossing the hall, exploring the parlors, examining the manuscript commonplace-books, and finally by sketching on a leaf of his pocket-book Mrs. Laudersdale, at the other end of the piazza, half-swinging in the vines through which broad sunbeams poured, while Helen Heath was singing and several other ladies were busying themselves with books and needle-work in her vicinity.”

“Ah, Mr. Raleigh!” said Helen Heath, as he put up the pocket-book and drew near,—­“Mrs. Laudersdale and I have been wondering how you amuse yourself up here; and I make my discovery.  You study animated nature; that is to say, you draw Mrs. Laudersdale and me.”

“Mistaken, Miss Helen.  I draw only Mrs. Laudersdale; and do you call that animated nature?”