with her
against all possible imputations.

"All right in the headpiece, is she?" reiterated the other more lightly.

"Very intelligent," replied Bates. "I have taught her myself. She is
remarkably intelligent." The young man's sensitive spirits, which had
suffered slight depression from contact with Bates's perturbation, now
recovered entirely.

"Oh, Glorianna!" he cried in irrepressible anticipation. "Let this very
intelligent young lady come on! Why"--in an explanatory way--"if I saw
as much as a female dress hanging on a clothes-line out to dry, I'm in
that state of mind I'd adore it properly."

If Bates had been sure that the girl would return safely he would
perhaps have been as well pleased that she should not return in time to
meet the proposed adoration; as it was, he was far too ill at ease
concerning her not to desire her advent as ardently as did the naive
youth. The first feeling made his manner severe; the second constrained
him to say he supposed she would shortly appear.

His mind was a good deal confounded, but if he supposed anything it was
that, having wakened to find herself left behind by the boat, she had
walked away from the house in an access of anger and disappointment, and
he expected her to return soon, because he did not think she had courage
or resolution to go very far alone. Underneath this was the uneasy fear
that her courage and resolution might take her farther into danger than
was at all desirable, but he stifled the fear.

When he went in he told the company, in a few matter-of-fact words of
his partner's death, and the object of the excursion from which they had
seen him return. He also mentioned that his aunt's companion, the dead
man's child, had, it appeared, gone off into the woods that
morning--this was by way of apology that she was not there to cook for
them, but he took occasion to ask if they had seen her on the hill. As
they had come down the least difficult way and had not met her, he
concluded that she had not endeavoured to go far afield, and tried to
dismiss his anxiety and enjoy his guests in his own way.

Hospitality, even in its simplest form, is more often a matter of
amiable pride than of sincere unselfishness, but it is not a form of
pride with which people are apt to quarrel. Bates, when he found himself
conversing with scientific men of gentle manners, was resolved to show
himself above the ordinary farmer of that locality. He went to the
barrel where th