"I must take you to see Mrs. Woodruff," she remarked. "You will be welcome in the set as flowers in May. You are spending the summer here, I suppose?"
"I have no plans. Where my mother is I shall be for the present, I have been separated from her so long."
"How beautiful! But about your future, Floyd? Have you a career decided upon, or are you to be a gentleman of leisure?"
I flushed: "My resolution is not taken as to what I shall be—certainly not an idle man."
"I can tell your fortune," she said in a low voice. "You need not cross my palm with silver for it, either."
"With gold, then?"
"I will tell it for love, but it is a golden fortune. You will marry Helen Floyd."
"No," said I with decision and some anger, "I shall never marry Helen. You do me too much honor. She would never look at me; and if she would there is something within me which forbids my marrying a rich woman. But it is nonsense. For Heaven's sake don't allude to it again! The man who marries her will be, to my thinking, the most fortunate of men, but—"
"We won't talk about it," said she good-naturedly. "There comes Mr. Thorpe to bid us good-morning. Astonishing how well he likes the walk to The Headlands!"
It was Thorpe indeed, carelessly but irreproachably dressed as usual, and looking at us with a smile of internal amusement, which he was probably too well-bred to express in words, for he merely drawled a good-morning and remarked on the beauty of the day.