here anything odd about it?"

"Oh," he said, after staring at her impassive face for a full minute.
"Now I'm sure you've been making fun of me all along."

"My dear Mr. Brandon, why will you persist in making me out a liar?"

He was forced to apologize again and became such a model of perplexity
and embarrassment that Hannah's gravity broke down at last and her merry
peal of laughter mingled with the clatter of plates and the hubbub of
voices.

"I must take pity on you and enlighten you," she said, "but promise me
it shall go no further. It's only our own little circle that knows about
it and I don't want to be the laughing-stock of the Lane."

"Of course I will promise," he said eagerly.

She kept his curiosity on the _qui vive_ to amuse herself a little
longer, but ended by telling him all, amid frequent exclamations of
surprise.

"Well, I never!" he said when it was over. "Fancy a religion in which
only two per cent. of the people who profess it have ever heard of its
laws. I suppose we're so mixed up with the English, that it never occurs
to us we've got marriage laws of our own--like the Scotch. Anyhow I'm
real glad and I congratulate you."

"On what?"

"On not being really married to Sam."

"Well, you're a nice friend of his, I must say. I don't congratulate
myself, I can tell you."

"You don't?" he said in a disappointed tone.

She shook her head silently.

"Why not?" he inquired anxiously.

"Well, to tell the truth, this forced marriage was my only chance of
getting a husband who wasn't pious. Don't look so puzzled. I wasn't
shocked at your wickedness--you mustn't be at mine. You know there's
such a lot of religion in our house that I thought if I ever did get
married I'd like a change."

"Ha! ha! ha! So you're as the rest of us. Well, it's plucky of you to
admit it."

"Don't see it. My living doesn't depend on religion, thank Heaven.
Father's a saint, I know, but he swallows everything he sees in his
books just as he swallows everything mother and I put before him in his
plate--and in spite of it all--" She was about to mention Levi's
shortcomings but checked herself in time. She had no right to unveil
anybody's soul but her own and she didn't know why she was doing that.

"But you don't mean to say your father would forbid you to marry a man
you cared for, just because he wasn't _froom_?"

"I'm sure he would."

"But that would be cruel."

"He wouldn't think so. He'd think he was savi