sterly instinct which
sometimes influences a young girl's masculine friendship, and elevates
the favored friend to the plane of the doll she has outgrown. As he
turned towards her, however, she rose, shook out her yellow dress, and
said with pretty petulance:--

"Then you must go so soon--and this your first and last visit as my
guardian?"

"No one could regret that more than I," looking at her with undefined
meaning.

"Yes," she said, with a tantalizing coquetry that might have suggested
an underlying seriousness. "I think you HAVE lost a good deal.
Perhaps, so have I. We might have been good friends in all these
years. But that is past."

"Why? Surely, I hope, my shortcomings with Miss Yerba Buena will not
be remembered by Miss Arguello?" sail Paul, earnestly.

"Ah! SHE may be a very different person."

"I hope not," said the young man, warmly. "But HOW different?"

"Well, she may not put herself in the way of receiving such point-blank
compliments as that," said the young girl, demurely.

"Not from her guardian?"

"She will have no guardian then." She said this gravely, but almost at
the same moment turned and sat down again, throwing her linked hands
over her knee, and looked at him mischievously. "You see what you have
lost, sir."

"I see," said Paul, but with all the gravity that she had dropped.

"No; but you don't see all. I had no brother--no friend. You might
have been both. You might have made me what you liked. You might have
educated me far better than these teachers, or, at least given me some
pride in my studies. There were so many things I wanted to know that
they couldn't teach me; so many times I wanted advice from some one
that I could trust. Colonel Pendleton was very good to me when he
came; he always treated me like a princess even when I wore short
frocks. It was his manner that first made me think he knew my family;
but I never felt as if I could tell him anything, and I don't think,
with all his chivalrous respect, he ever understood me. As to the
others--the Mayors--well, you may judge from Mr. Henderson. It is a
wonder that I did not run away or do something desperate. Now, are you
not a LITTLE sorry?"

Her voice, which had as many capricious changes as her manner, had been
alternately coquettish, petulant, and serious, had now become playful
again. But, like the rest of her sex, she was evidently more alert to
her surroundings at such a moment than her comp