didn't
know it? And feared the consequences, perhaps?" she added, with a
slight return of her previous expressive manner.

Again Paul was puzzled and irritated, he knew not why. But he only
said pleasantly, "I differ from you there. I am afraid that such a
thing as fear never entered into Colonel Pendleton's calculations on
any subject. I think he would act the same towards the highest and the
lowest, the powerful or the most weak." As she glanced at him quickly
and mischievously, he added, "I am quite willing to believe that his
knowledge of you made his duty pleasanter."

He was again quite sincere, and his slight sympathy had that
irresistible quality of tone and look which made him so dangerous. For
he was struck with the pretty, soothed self-complacency that had shone
in her face since he had spoken of Pendleton's equal disinterestedness.
It seemed, too, as if what he had taken for passion or petulance in her
manner had been only a resistance to some continual aggression of
condition. With that remainder held in check, a certain latent
nobility was apparent, as of her true self. In this moment of pleased
abstraction she had drawn through the lattice-work of one of the
windows a spray of roses clinging to the vine, and with her graceful
head a little on one side, was softly caressing her cheek with it. She
certainly was very pretty. From the crown of her dark little head to
the narrow rosetted slippers that had been idly tapping the ground, but
now seemed to press it more proudly, with arched insteps and small
ankles, she was pleasant to look upon.

"But you surely have something else to think about, Miss Yerba?" said
the young man, with conviction. "In a few months you will be of age,
and rid of those dreadfully stupid guardians; with your"--

The loosened rose-spray flew from her hand out of the window as she
made a gesture, half real, half assumed, of imploring supplication.
"Oh, please, Mr. Hathaway, for Heaven's sake don't YOU begin too! You
are going to say that, with my wealth, my accomplishments, my beauty,
my friends, what more can I want? What do I care about a secret that
can neither add to them nor take them away? Yes, you were! It's the
regular thing to say--everybody says it. Why, I should have thought
'the youngest senator' could afford to have been more original."

"I plead guilty to ALL the weaknesses of humanity," said Paul, warmly,
again beginning to believe that he had been mos