"Mr. Valchester, here is a four-leaved clover for you," said Violet. "Take it and keep it. It may bring you good luck."
"Thank you," he said, and took it carelessly and held it between his long, white fingers. A little later, when no one was looking, he shut it inside the leaves of Jaquelina's book.
"You have given the clover to one who could not appreciate good luck if it came to him," laughed Walter. "Valchester has known nothing else all his life. He is fortune's favorite."
"I think you are, too, Mr. Earle—you and Violet," Jaquelina said, gently.
A faint sigh quivered over her lips as she spoke. She looked at these three in their costly apparel and with their bright, happy faces, and it seemed to her as if they belonged to quite a different world from her own. They were fortune's favorites, all of them.
"Thank you," said Walter, smiling, "I hope the fickle goddess will always be kind to me."
Then Violet rose, shaking out the apple blossoms that had fallen into the folds of her dress, and declared it was time to go.
"We came to ask you to go boating with us," said Walter, "but I suppose," with anything but a loving glance at innocent Dollie, "it would be no use."
Jaquelina's eyes brightened, then saddened again almost pathetically.
"No, for Aunt Meredith has gone away," she said. "I could not go to-day."