"I know it is, and you know I mean it when I say I expect to see you on the federal bench yourself some day."
"Luncheon is getting cold, sir," said the old family butler, coming into the room and looking far from amiable.
"Let it wait, Thomas," said the Judge, "until you can get a bottle of champagne up from the cellar. We have some healths to drink to-day, haven't we, children?"
That evening the little church was lighted up for evening service, and again the rustling of fans ceased, and heads were turned around as Florence and Harold took their seats. But Harold's eyes were no longer directed toward the pew in front of him, and the doctor's daughter remarked that the two people in front of her stood unnecessarily close to each other during the hymns, while the postmaster's wife made up her mind that people who "smirk and look so silly durin' meetin' must be sparkin'." In fact the homely folk of Fairville were not slow of perception; many were the gossiping heads put together that night, and it was a curious coincidence that there was no dissenting voice in regard to the probability of a certain event having taken place that afternoon.
Going home that night, Florence and Harold walked with the tarrying step of lovers, but the Judge was not waiting luncheon, and, as the evening was warm and bright, they rested again under the willows, watching the moonlight play on the ripples of the lake. They were planning for the future, and many were the rosy tinted castles reared in that soft night air under the shade of the trees they loved so well. The moon shone kindly over the mountain top at the farther end of the lake, and the waves plashed softly on the pebbles at their feet, as Florence sat there with her head resting on Harold's shoulder, dreaming the sweetest dream of life.
CHAPTER XII.
UNREST.
The sun was streaming through the Sanderson's library window, and the curtains were fluttering in the soft lake breeze which blew through the open casement. Across the driveway a policeman was chatting with a trim nursery maid, and two or three loungers were leaning over the sea wall, watching the blue water splash lazily against the grey stones. The white sails of the lake craft in the offing glistened in the sunshine, and the smoke from the steamers settled along the horizon in long black streaks, while the passing of an occasional vehicle along the driveway produced a little cloud of dust, which for a moment obscured the view, and then was carried away by the summer breeze and scattered along the roadway. The atmosphere had the hazy hue peculiar to one of those first warm days of early summer, when the air seems charged with lassitude, and one is overpowered with a depressing sense of ennui, which precludes the possibility of any sort of action.
Marion Sanderson and Florence Moreland were there in the library, trying to keep cool and talking over the events of the past six months. Marion was stretched on a lounge with an Eau-de-Cologne bandage bound about her forehead to relieve the migraine from which she was suffering, and Florence sat beside her, plying a palm-leaf fan and trying to amuse her friend by accounts of the small doings of her life in New Hampshire.