There was just time to return the pressure of her hand and give a grateful look into the kindly face, and then they were back with the others on the porch.

That dinner was an immense success from every standpoint, Mrs. Prout cooked like cordon bleu, Zephania, all starch and frills and excitement, served like a—­but no, she didn’t; she served in a manner quite her own, bringing on the oysters with a whispered aside to Wade that she had “most forgot the ice,” introducing the chicken with a triumphant laugh, and standing off to observe the effect it made before returning to the kitchen for the new potatoes, late asparagus, and string-beans, so tiny that Mrs. Prout declared it was a sin and a shame to pick them.  There was a salad of lettuce and tomatoes, and the Doctor, with grave mien, prepared the dressing, tasting it at every stage and uttering congratulatory “Ha’s!” And there were plenty of strawberries and much cake—­Zephania’s very best maple-layer—­and ice-cream from Manchester, a trifle soft, but, as Eve maintained, all the better when you put it over the berries.  And—­breathe it softly lest Eden Village hear—­there was champagne!  Eve and Miss Mullett treated it with vast respect, but the Doctor met it metaphorically with open arms, as one welcomes an old friend, and, under its gentle influence, tossed aside twenty years and made decorous, but desperate, love to Miss Mullett.  And then, to continue the pleasant formality of the occasion, the ladies withdrew to the parlor, and Wade and the Doctor smoked two very stout and very black cigars and sipped two tiny glasses of brandy.

In the parlor Miss Mullett turned to Eve in excited trepidation.  “My dear,” she asked, in a thrilling whisper, “do you think I took too much champagne?  My cheeks are positively burning!”

“I don’t know,” laughed Eve, “but the color is very becoming, dear.”

“But I shouldn’t want Mr. Herrick to think—­”

“He won’t,” replied Eve, soothingly.  “No matter how intoxicated you got, I’m sure he is too much of a gentleman to think any such thing.”

“Any such thing as what?”

“Why, what you said.”

“But I hadn’t said!” declared Miss Mullett, sinking tragically onto the couch.  Whereupon Eve laughed, and Miss Mullett declared that rather than have the gentleman think her the least bit—­well—­the very least bit, you understand!—­she would go right home.  And Eve was forced to assure her with serious face that she wasn’t the least bit, and wasn’t in any danger of becoming so.  Miss Mullett was comforted and Eve, who had been standing by the marble-topped table, idly opened a book lying there.  It wasn’t a very interesting volume, from her point of view, being a work on metallurgy.  She turned to the front and found Wade’s name written on the fly-leaf, and was about to lay it down when she caught sight of a piece of paper marking a place.  With no thought of prying, she opened the book again.  The paper proved to be an empty envelope addressed to Wade in typewritten characters.  In the upper left-hand corner was an inscription that interested her:  “After five days return to The Evelyn Mining Co., Craig’s Camp, Colo.”