ll be better for him,
I'm sure,' she added, and naively:

'I 'd like to meet him up at the Grange.' Temple, she said, had left the
Navy and was reading in London for the Bar--good news to me.

'You have not told us anything about your princess, Harry,' Janet
observed on the ride home.

'Do you take her for a real person, Janet?'

'One thinks of her as a snow-mountain you've been admiring.'

'Very well; so let her be.'

'Is she kind and good?'

'Yes.'

'Does she ride well?'

'She rides remarkably well.'

'She 's fair, I suppose?'

'Janet, if I saw you married to Temple, it would be the second great wish
of my heart.'

'Harry, you're a bit too cruel, as Julia would say.'

'Have you noticed she gets more and more Irish?'

'Perhaps she finds it is liked. Some women can adapt themselves . . .
they 're the happiest. All I meant to ask you is, whether your princess
is like the rest of us?'

'Not at all,' said I, unconscious of hurting.

'Never mind. Don't be hard on Julia. She has the making of a good
woman--a girl can see that; only she can't bear loneliness, and doesn't
understand yet what it is to be loved by a true gentleman. Persons of
that class can't learn it all at once.'

I was pained to see her in tears. Her figure was straight, and she spoke
without a quaver of her voice.

'Heriot's an excellent fellow,' I remarked.

'He is. I can't think ill of my friends,' said she.

'Dear girl, is it these two who make you unhappy?'

'No; but dear old grandada! . . .'

The course of her mind was obvious. I would rather have had her less
abrupt and more personal in revealing it. I stammered something.

'Heriot does not know you as I do,' she said, strangling a whimper. 'I
was sure it was serious, though one's accustomed to associate princesses
with young men's dreams. I fear, Harry, it will half break our dear old
grandada's heart. He is rough, and you have often been against him, for
one unfortunate reason. If you knew him as I do you would pity him
sincerely. He hardly grumbled at all at your terribly long absence. Poor
old man! he hopes on.'

'He's incurably unjust to my father.'

'Your father has been with you all the time, Harry? I guessed it.'

'Well?'

'It generally bodes no good to the Grange. Do pardon me for saying that.
I know nothing of him; I know only that the squire is generous, and THAT
I stand for with all my might. Forgive me for what I said.'

'Forgive you--with all my heart