“Now, really, this is very good in you, Mr. Travilla,” remarked Miss Deane:  “there is no place I like better to visit than Ion, and I begin to think it was rather a fortunate mishap—­missing my train.”

“Very unfortunate for me, I fear,” sighed Edward to himself.  “The loss of her drive will be a great disappointment to Zoe, and the sight of such a guest far from making it up to her.  I am thankful the visit is to be for only a night.”

Aloud he said, “I fear you will find it less pleasant than on former occasions,—­in fact, rather lonely; as all the family are absent—­spending the winter at Viamede, my mother’s Louisiana plantation—­except my wife and myself.”

“Ah! but your wife is a charming little girl,—­I never can think of her as a woman, you know,—­and you are a host in yourself,” returned the lady laughingly.

Zoe’s callers had left; and she, having donned hat and cloak, not to keep her husband a single moment, was at the window watching for his coming, when the carriage came driving up the avenue, and drew up at the door.

She hurried out, expecting to find no one there but himself, and to be at once handed to a seat in the vehicle, and the next minute be speeding away with him, enjoying her drive all the more for the little disappointment that had preceded it.

What, then, was her chagrin to see a visitor handed out, and that visitor the woman for whom she had conceived the most violent antipathy!

“Miss Deane, my dear,” Edward said, with an entreating look at Zoe, which she did not see, her eyes being at that instant fixed upon the face of her uninvited and unwelcome guest.

“How do you do, my dear Mrs. Travilla?  I hope you are glad to see me?” laughed the intruder, holding out a delicately gloved hand, “your husband has played the Good Samaritan to me to-night—­saving me from having to stay in one of those wretched little hotels in the village till two o’clock to-morrow morning.”

“I am in usual health, thank you.  Will you walk in?” returned Zoe in a freezing tone, and utterly ignoring the offered hand.  “Will you step into the parlor? or would you prefer being shown to your room first?”

“The latter, if you please,” Miss Deane answered sweetly, apparently quite unaware that Zoe’s manner was in the least ungracious.

“Dinah,” said Zoe, to a maid-in-waiting, “show Miss Deane to the room she occupied on her last visit.  Carry up her satchel, and see that she has every thing she wants.”

Having given the order, Zoe stepped out to the veranda where Edward still was, having staid behind to give directions in regard to the horses.

“Zoe, love, I am very sorry,” he said, as the man turned his horses’ heads, and drove away toward the stables.

“O Edward! how could you?” she exclaimed reproachfully, tears of disappointment and vexation springing to her eyes.

“Darling, I really could not help it,” he replied soothingly, drawing her to him with a caress, and went on to tell exactly what had occurred.