and Miss Huntington became great friends.  They took to riding together, walking together, and seeing a great deal of each other, the elder lady spending much of her time up at Miss Huntington’s home, among the shrubbery and flowers of the old place.  It was a mystification to Mrs. Nailor, who frankly confessed that she could only account for it on the ground that Mrs. Lancaster wanted to find out how far matters had gone between Keith and Miss Huntington.  “That girl is a sly minx,” she said.  “These governesses learn to be deceptive.  I would not have her in my house.”

If there was a more dissatisfied mortal in the world than Gordon Keith that Autumn Keith did not know him.  He worked hard, but it did not ease his mind.  He tried retiring to his old home, as he had done in the Summer; but it was even worse than it had been then.  Rumor came to him that Lois Huntington was engaged.  It came through Mrs. Nailor, and he could not verify it; but, at least, she was lost to him.  He cursed himself for a fool.

The picture of Mrs. Lancaster began to come to him oftener and oftener as she had appeared to him that night on the verandah—­handsome, dignified, serene, sympathetic.  Why should he not seek release by this way?  He had always admired, liked her.  He felt her sympathy; he recognized her charm; he appreciated her—­yes, her advantage.  Curse it! that was the trouble.  If he were only in love with her!  If she were not so manifestly advantageous, then he might think his feeling was more than friendship; for she was everything that he admired.

He was just in this frame of mind when a letter came from Rhodes, who had come home soon after Keith’s visit to him.  He had not been very well, and they had decided to take a yacht-cruise in Southern waters, and would he not come along?  He could join them at either Hampton Roads or Savannah, and they were going to run over to the Bermudas.

Keith telegraphed that he would join them, and two days later turned his face to the South.  Twenty-four hours afterwards he was stepping up the gangway and being welcomed by as gay a group as ever fluttered handkerchiefs to cheer a friend.  Among them the first object that had caught his eye as he rowed out was the straight, lithe figure of Mrs. Lancaster.  A man is always ready to think Providence interferes specially in his, case, provided the interpretation accords with his own views, and this looked to Keith very much as if it were Providence.  For one thing, it saved him the trouble of thinking further of a matter which, the more he thought of it, the more he was perplexed.  She came forward with the others, and welcomed him with her old frank, cordial grasp of the hand and gracious air.  When he was comfortably settled, he felt a distinct self-content that he had decided to come.

A yacht-cruise is dependent on three things:  the yacht itself, the company on board, and the weather.  Keith had no cause to complain of any of these.