Her diabolical scheme, conceived in the mischievous spirit of second childhood, was to lead Joan on to a desire to show off her country house to her relations at the moment when the man she had married and the girl with whom he was amusing himself on the sly were together.

"How dramatic," she chuckled, in concocting the plan.

"How delightfully dramatic." And she might have added, "How hideously cruel." But it was not until some little time after they had all adjourned to the drawing-room, and Joan had played the whole range of her old pieces for the edification of her grandfather, that she set her trap.
"If I had my time over again," she said, looking the epitome of benevolence, "I would never spend spring in the city." "Wouldn't you, dear ?" prompted Mrs.Harley, eager to make the conversation general and so give poor George a rest.
"No, my love.

I would make my winter season begin in November and end in February--four good months for the Opera, the theatres, entertaining and so forth.

Then on the first of March, the kind-hearted month that nurses April's violets, I would leave town for my country place and, as the poets have it watch the changing skies and the hazel blooms peep through the swelling buds and hear the trees begin to whisper and the throstles break into song.