The lake at Saratoga is the most picturesque feature of the region, and would alone make the fortune of any other watering-place.  It is always a surprise to the stranger, who has bowled along the broad drive of five miles through a pleasing but not striking landscape, to come suddenly, when he alights at the hotel, upon what seems to be a “fault,” a sunken valley, and to look down a precipitous, grassy, tree-planted slope upon a lake sparkling at the bottom and reflecting the enclosing steep shores.  It is like an aqua-marine gem countersunk in the green landscape.  Many an hour had Irene and Stanhope passed in dreamy contemplation of it.  They had sailed down the lake in the little steamer, they had whimsically speculated about this and that couple who took their ices or juleps under the trees or on the piazza of the hotel, and the spot had for them a thousand tender associations.  It was here that Stanhope had told her very fully the uneventful story of his life, and it was here that she had grown into full sympathy with his aspirations for the future.

It was of all this that Irene thought as she sat talking that day with Penelope on a bench at the foot of the hill by the steamboat landing.  It was this very future that the woman of the world was using to raise in the mind of Irene a morbid sense of her duty.  Skillfully with this was insinuated the notion of the false and contemptible social pride and exclusiveness of Stanhope’s relations, which Mrs. Bartlett Glow represented as implacable while she condemned it as absurd.  There was not a word of opposition to the union of Irene and Stanhope:  Penelope was not such a bungler as to make that mistake.  It was not her cue to definitely suggest a sacrifice for the welfare of her cousin.  If she let Irene perceive that she admired the courage in her that could face all these adverse social conditions that were conjured up before her, Irene could never say that Penelope had expressed anything of the sort.  Her manner was affectionate, almost caressing; she declared that she felt a sisterly interest in her.  This was genuine enough.  I am not sure that Mrs. Bartlett Glow did not sometimes waver in her purpose when she was in the immediate influence of the girl’s genuine charm, and felt how sincere she was.  She even went so far as to wish to herself that Irene had been born in her own world.

It was not at all unnatural that Irene should have been charmed by Penelope, and that the latter should gradually have established an influence over her.  She was certainly kind-hearted, amiable, bright, engaging.  I think all those who have known her at Newport, or in her New York home, regard her as one of the most charming women in the world.  Nor is she artificial, except as society requires her to be, and if she regards the conventions of her own set as the most important things in life, therein she does not differ from hosts of excellent wives and mothers.  Irene, being utterly candid herself, never suspected that Penelope