with an almost maternal
solicitude. He absorbed her with a spasmodic, half selfish, wholly
insistent appeal. She received his confidences, wrote his letters, and
tied his cravats. Upon his last visit home he had spent the greater
part of his time in Kingsborough; now he rode in seldom, and invariably
returned in a moody and depressed condition.

"You're worth the whole bunch of them," he had said to her of other
girls, "you dear old Eugie."

And she had warmed and laid a faithful hand on his arm. It was
characteristic of her that no call for affection went disregarded--that
the sensitive fibres of her nature quivered beneath any caressing hand.

"Do you really like me best?" she asked.

"Don't I?" He laughed his impulsive, boyish laugh--"I'll prove it by
letting you go in for the mail this afternoon. I detest Kingsborough!"

"Oh! No, no, I love it, but I suppose it is dull for you."

She ordered the carriage and went upstairs to put on her hat. When she
came down Bernard was not in sight, and she drove off, wondering why he
or any one else should detest Kingsborough.

She performed her mission at the post-office, and was mentally weighing
the probabilities of Nicholas having finished work for the day, when, in
passing along the main street, she saw him come to the door of his
office with a round, rosy girl, whom she recognised as Bessie Pollard.

She had intended to take him out with her, but as she caught sight of
his visitor she gave them both a condescending nod and ordered Sampson
to drive on. She felt vaguely offended and sharply irritated with
herself for permitting it. Her annoyance was not allayed by the fact
that Amos Burr stopped her in the road to inform her that his wife was
fattening a brood of turkeys which she would like to deliver into the
hands of Miss Chris. As he stood before her, hairy, ominous, uncouth,
she realised for the first time the full horror of the fact that he was
father to the man she loved. Hitherto she had but dimly grasped the
idea. Nicholas had been associated in her thoughts with the judge and
her earlier school days; and she had conceived of his poverty and his
people only in the heroic measures that related to his emancipation from
them. Now she felt that had she, in the beginning, seen him side by side
with his father, she could not have loved him. She flinched from Amos
Burr's shaggy exterior and drew back haughtily.

"I have nothing to do with the housekeeping," she sai