ting, as _I_ call it in my old-fashioned way. Supposing
he were to, would you encourage him?'

'To ME, mother?' said Avice, with an inquiring laugh. 'I thought--he
meant you!'

'O no, he doesn't mean me,' said her mother hastily. 'He is nothing more
than my friend.'

'I don't want any addresses,' said the daughter.

'He is a man in society, and would take you to an elegant house in
London suited to your education, instead of leaving you to mope here.'

'I should like that well enough,' replied Avice carelessly.

'Then give him some encouragement.'

'I don't care enough about him to do any encouraging. It is his
business, I should think, to do all.'

She spoke in her lightest vein; but the result was that when Pierston,
who had discreetly withdrawn, returned to them, she walked docilely,
though perhaps gloomily, beside him, her mother dropping to the rear.
They came to a rugged descent, and Pierston took her hand to help her.
She allowed him to retain it when they arrived on level ground.

Altogether it was not an unsuccessful evening for the man with the
unanchored heart, though possibly initial success meant worse for him in
the long run than initial failure. There was nothing marvellous in the
fact of her tractability thus far. In his modern dress and style, under
the rays of the moon, he looked a very presentable gentleman indeed,
while his knowledge of art and his travelled manners were not without
their attractions for a girl who with one hand touched the educated
middle-class and with the other the rude and simple inhabitants of the
isle. Her intensely modern sympathies were quickened by her peculiar
outlook.

Pierston would have regarded his interest in her as overmuch selfish
if there had not existed a redeeming quality in the substratum of
old pathetic memory by which such love had been created--which still
permeated it, rendering it the tenderest, most anxious, most protective
instinct he had ever known. It may have had in its composition too much
of the boyish fervour that had characterized such affection when he was
cherry-cheeked, and light in the foot as a girl; but, if it was all this
feeling of youth, it was more.

Mrs. Pierston, in fearing to be frank, lest she might seem to be angling
for his fortune, did not fully divine his cheerful readiness to offer
it, if by so doing he could make amends for his infidelity to her family
forty years back in the past. Time had not made him mercenary, an