I
seem cruel, child."

"Call me by my name. Call me Vesty Kirtland. I hate you! With my
whole heart and soul I hate you!"

So the bold lions at the gate, desperately guarding sea-depths of pain
behind.

"Really, Vesta Kirtland! if things were different I would rather be
mother-in-law to you than to Grace Langham. You are a pupil worthy of
my metal! You are fire, I see. Bravo!"

Vesty stood with her head on her arm, resting against a tree, holding
herself.

"I do not know that there is anything more to say. Notely will never
seek his own release. But, if you loved him _truly_----"

"I do!"

Flaming scorn and a smile as defiant as Mrs. Garrison's own.

"Do you?" said the surgeon. "Then release him."

"You told a lie. Notely does not want to be released. He loves me,
not Grace Langham. You know how it is with men. If I should go to
your house and say to him, 'Come with me; come down to my father's
house, since there is no other way, and help troll, and haul the traps,
and make the nets, and be with me,' he would come!"

"Yes," said the lady, pale, "he would go. Therefore, as I said, do you
save him."

"What makes that life so much better, out there, than ours, that I
should give him up to it, and break my heart and his? Are you one that
they make?"

"All people do not regard me with such disfavor." She looked at the
girl almost wistfully. "Life _is_ hard, Vesta, and exacting, spite of
all that we can do; and the world is hard and exacting, supercilious,
ready to pick at a flaw--you do not know."

"Well, I think Notely will be happier here with me."

Yet one could see the girl's pale resolve, only she was turning the
knife a little on the heartless surgeon. It cut sharply.

"For a month or two, Vesta, yes."

"And then?"

"One who has been accustomed to champagne from an ice-cooler will not
be satisfied forever with sucking warm spring water in the sun, however
wholesome."

"Ah!"

"He will grow very tired. He will not speak, but he will regret."

"Ah! he will think what he has given up; and it _is_ so much, all in
all; yes, it is too much!"

Mrs. Garrison turned, startled at the girl's voice. The lions held the
gateway, sad and gloomy. Into those heaving depths behind she should
not enter.

"You have not told me anything. I only got you to say it over. I had
thought it all out for myself. I do not mean, any more, that Notely
shall marry me."

Mrs. Garrison gave her a