ent papers. A rusty
sword hung on the wall. Biographies of Lee and Jackson, flanking the
Chinese fat vase in the dilapidated escritoire, and a villainous crayon
framed in immortelles upon the wall, that probably represented his
deceased debtor, completed the ornamentation of the room. Miss Benson
entered when he had gone as far as this, and vivaciously exhibited the
bric-a-brac of the room.

"This is a Ming." She pointed to the fat vase. "I understand there isn't
another like it in the country. It belongs to the Ming dynasty."

Although from Boston, Ellesworth was not familiar with the Ming dynasty,
but he bowed and feebly ejaculated,--

"Ah! this is a real Ming, is it?"

"And there," said the young lady, bringing him before the glass-case,
"are family possessions. That is a coin of George II.; those are
Pine-tree shillings; those yellow papers are two copies of a continental
newspaper, and this is the South Carolinian continental penny."

Ellesworth inspected the treasures gravely. He did his best not to
smile.

"Very remarkable!" he murmured. "How Southern!" he thought.

"Colonel Tom Garvin says there are nothing like them in the country. I
suppose they would bring a great deal if sold," she added, wistfully.
"But we don't like to sell them. Besides, we never saw anybody who
wanted to buy them."

Acquaintance under one roof passes quickly into intimacy. Love moves
with fleet feet when two young people breakfast and dine together with a
vague chaperone. A tropical garden, soft evenings and youthful
impetuosity shorten the span to experience thought necessary to precede
an engagement.

Georgiella was the soul of domestic comfort--as Southern women are. She
was a high-spirited, variable, bewitching creature. At first, the
Northerner could not understand her indifference to her obligations as a
mortgager. Why did she not sell the Ming vase? She looked upon debt not
as a disgrace, but as an inconvenience. Foreclosure proceedings were
under way, and it never occurred to the two women to stop them with even
a part of the fifty dollars which Ellesworth paid for his board in
advance. When Ellesworth found out that this trait was not a pauper's,
but like Georgiella's strange beauty, constitutional, he forbore to
criticise it. In truth, he was too much in love now to criticise the
girl at all. It is probable that if she had robbed his pocketbook he
would have merely said, "How interesting! it is her tropical way."