It was one of life’s beautiful hours, she thought, as in a great splash of salt water she reached the buoy, and hung laughing and panting to its restless bulk.  Ward had preceded her by a full minute, Richard was half a minute behind her.  With much vainglorious boasting from the men, they all rested there before the homeward swim.  Harriet hardly spoke, her cup was full to the brim with a mysterious felicity born of the summer hour, the heaving waters, and the joyous mood of father and son.  When Richard praised her swimming she flushed in the severe blue cap, and the blue eyes met his with the shy pleasure of a child.  It was while she was hastily dressing, in the hot bath house a little later, that a sudden thought came to her, and flushed the lovely face again, and brought her to a sudden pause.

A tremendous thought, that made her breast rise suddenly, and her eyes fix themselves vaguely on space for a long, long minute.  Her palms were damp, and she put them over her hot cheeks.  But that—­ she whispered in the deeps of her soul, that was nonsense!

When Blondin arrived she did not see him, for Mrs. Tabor and Madame Carter, elaborately entering at five, reported him “perfectly wonderful” on the trip down, and that he had shown such transports at the sight of the woods and the water that they had put him down perhaps a mile away, to walk alone for the rest of the way, and commune with his own exquisite soul.  The expectantly waiting Nina, at this, followed Amy upstairs in the direction of the white organdie, and Harriet felt a little premonitory chill.

“Oh, Miss Field!” said Madame Carter’s voice, an hour later, as Harriet passed her door.  The old lady had been talking with her grandson, while she was resting, magnificent in a pale blue negligee, but her maid was now extremely busy at the toilet table, and an elaborate dinner costume was laid out upon the bed.  Harriet entered.

“Well, how has the little household been running?” asked Madame Carter, who had been away for almost a week.  “Miss Nina looks sweet.”  And without waiting for a reply, which indeed would have been of no interest to her, she added, blandly, “Ward tells me that you are a beautiful swimmer!”

“Ward did not find that out to-day,” Harriet said, mildly, thus informed that her radiant hour with both the Carters was known to the mother and grandmother.

“My son is a brilliant man,” said Madame Carter, with apparent irrelevance, “but the most brilliant men in the world are the stupidest in domestic life, isn’t that so?”

Harriet, ready for the knife, said pleasantly that perhaps it was sometimes so.

“Now my son,” Madame Carter said, confidentially, “is a man of scrupulous honour.  But he is capable of placing a young woman, and”—­she bowed graciously—­“a beautiful young woman, in a very false position!  I confess that if I were in that young woman’s place, I should resent it.  I should feel—­”