rhaps it was this that put a sudden hauteur into the young girl's
expression as she stared at Miss Avondale's departing figure.

"If you ever come to England, Mr. Trent," she said, with a pretty
dignity in her youthful face, "I hope you will find some people not
quite so rude as my cousin and"--

"Miss Avondale, you would say," returned Randolph quietly. "As to HER,
I am quite accustomed to her maturer superiority, which, I am afraid,
is the effect of my own youth and inexperience; and I believe that, in
course of time, your cousin's brusqueness might be as easily understood
by me. I dare say," he added, with a laugh, "that I must seem to them
a very romantic visionary with my 'trust,' and the foolish importance I
have put upon a very trivial occurrence."

"I don't think so," said the girl quickly, "and I consider Bill very
rude, and," she added, with a return of her boyish frankness, "I shall
tell him so. As for Miss Avondale, she's AT LEAST thirty, I understand;
perhaps she can't help showing it in that way, too."

But here Randolph, to evade further personal allusions, continued
laughingly: "And as I've LOST my 'trust,' I haven't even that to show in
defense. Indeed, when you all are gone I shall have nothing to remind me
of my kind benefactor. It will seem like a dream."

Miss Eversleigh was silent for a moment, and then glanced quickly
around her. The rest of the company were their elders, and, engaged in
conversation at the other end of the apartment, had evidently left the
young people to themselves.

"Wait a moment," she said, with a youthful air of mystery and
earnestness. Randolph saw that she had slipped an Indian bracelet,
profusely hung with small trinkets, from her arm to her wrist, and was
evidently selecting one. It proved to be a child's tiny ring with a
small pearl setting. "This was given to me by Cousin Jack," said Miss
Eversleigh in a low voice, "when I was a child, at some frolic or
festival, and I have kept it ever since. I brought it with me when we
came here as a kind of memento to show him. You know that is impossible
now. You say you have nothing of his to keep. Will you accept this?
I know he would be glad to know you had it. You could wear it on your
watch chain. Don't say no, but take it."

Protesting, yet filled with a strange joy and pride, Randolph took it
from the young girl's hand. The little color which had deepened on
her cheek cleared away as he thanked her gratefully, and wi