t intuitively that he saw straight
through her little subterfuge of the flowers, that he divined her
girlish worship at the shrine of Cynthia, and was making fun of her.

"Do you object to a cigar, Miss Brewster?" asked Robert, and Risley
looked inquiringly at her.

"Oh, no," replied Ellen, with the eager readiness of a child to fit
into new conditions. She thought of the sitting-room at home, blue
with the rank pipe-smoke of Nahum Beals and his kind. She pictured
them to herself sitting about on these warm evenings in their
shirt-sleeves, and she saw the two gentlemen in their light summer
clothes with their fragrant cigars at their lips, and all of a
sudden she realized that between these men and the others there was
a great gulf, and that she was trying to cross it. She did not
realize, as later, that the gulf was one of externals, and of width
rather than depth, but it seemed to her then that from one shore she
could only see dimly the opposite. A great fear and jealousy came
over her as to her own future accessibility to those of the other
kind among whom she had been brought up, like her father and
Granville.

Ellen felt all this as she sat beside Cynthia, who was casting about
in her mind, in rather an annoyed fashion, for something to say to
this young beneficiary of hers which should not have anything to do
with the benefit.

Finally she inquired if she were having a pleasant vacation, and
Ellen replied that she was. Risley looked at her beautiful face with
the double radiance of the electric-light and the lamp-light from
the window on it, giving it a curious effect. It suddenly occurred
to him to wonder why everybody seemed to have such an opinion as to
the talents of this girl. Why did Cynthia consider that her native
ability warranted this forcible elevation of her from her own sphere
and setting her on a height of education above her kind? She looked
and spoke like an ordinary young girl. She had a beautiful face, it
is true, and her shyness seemed due to the questioning attitude of a
child rather than to self-consciousness, but, after all, why did she
give people that impression? Her valedictory had been clever, no
doubt, and there was in it a certain fire of conviction, which,
though crude, was moving; but, after all, almost any bright girl
might have written it. She had been a fine scholar, no doubt, but
any girl with a ready intelligence might have done as well. Whence
came this inclination of all