yet," said Randolph, with a sudden seriousness he could not
control, "I honestly believe that Captain Dornton would be perfectly
happy--yes, rejoiced!--if he knew the property had come to YOU."

There was such an air of conviction, and, it seemed to the simple girl,
even of spiritual insight, in his manner that her clear, handsome eyes
rested wonderingly on his.

"Do you really think so?" she said thoughtfully. "And yet HE knows
that I am like him. Yes," she continued, answering Randolph's look of
surprise, "I am just like HIM in that. I loathe and despise the life
that this thing would condemn me to; I hate all that it means, and all
that it binds me to, as he used to; and if I could, I would cut and run
from it as HE did."

She spoke with a determined earnestness and warmth, so unlike her usual
grave naivete that he was astonished. There was a flush on her cheek and
a frank fire in her eye that reminded him strangely of the captain; and
yet she had emphasized her words with a little stamp of her narrow foot
and a gesture of her hand that was so untrained and girlish that he
smiled, and said, with perhaps the least touch of bitterness in his
tone, "But you will get over that when you come into the property."

"I suppose I shall," she returned, with an odd lapse to her former
gravity and submissiveness. "That's what they all tell me."

"You will be independent and your own mistress," he added.

"Independent," she repeated impatiently, "with Dornton Hall and twenty
thousand a year! Independent, with every duty marked out for me!
Independent, with every one to criticise my smallest actions--every one
who would never have given a thought to the orphan who was contented
and made her own friends on a hundred a year! Of course you, who are
a stranger, don't understand; yet I thought that you"--she
hesitated,--"would have thought differently."

"Why?"

"Why, with your belief that one should make one's own fortune," she
said.

"That would do for a man, and in that I respected Captain Dornton's
convictions, as you told them to me. But for a girl, how could she be
independent, except with money?"

She shook her head as if unconvinced, but did not reply. They were
nearing the garden porch, when she looked up, and said: "And as YOU'RE
a man, you will be making your way in the world. Mr. Dingwall said you
would."

There was something so childishly trustful and confident in her
assurance that he smiled. "Mr. Dingwall i