aret Bean paused in her flight, and laid
her ear to the door again. "I don't want your woodland," said Lot.
"The interest is paid without it. It is your wedding-gift."

"Why should you do this? I did not ask you to," Burr returned, almost
defiantly; and Margaret Bean had felt indignant at his unthankfulness.

"You can take from your kinsman what you could not take from Parson
Fair," replied Lot. "I hear you will not go to nest in Parson Fair's
snug roof-tree, with your pretty bird, either."

"I will die before I will take my wife under any roof but my own,"
cried Burr, fiercely, "and I want no gifts from you either. I am not
turned beggar from any one yet. You shall take the woodland."

Lot waved his hand as if he swept the woodland, with all its
half-grown trees, out of his horizon. "And yet," he said, "I thought
'twas what you left the other for. I should have said 'twas but your
wage that was offered you;" and he smiled at his cousin.

"What do you mean, Lot Gordon?"

Lot looked at him with sharp interest. "Was there another leaf of you
to read when I thought I was at the end," said he, "or were you writ
in such plain characters that I put in somewhat of my own imaginings
to give substance to them? Are you better, and worse, than I thought
you, cousin? Do you love this flower that has her counterpart in all
the gardens of the world, that is as sweet and no sweeter, that you
can replace when she dies by stooping and picking, better than the
one which has thorns enough to kill and sweetness enough to pay for
death, and whose bloom you can never match?"

"I don't know what you mean," Burr said, impatiently and angrily; and
Margaret Bean outside the door wagged her head in scornful assent.

"Then you loved Dorothy Fair better than Madelon Hautville, and 'twas
not her place and money that turned you her way," said Lot, as if he
were translating; and he kept his keen eyes on the other's face.

Burr's face flashed white. "What right have you to question me like
this?" he demanded.

"But you would not take the price, after all," said Lot, as if he had
been answered, instead of questioned. Then he looked up at his cousin
with something like kindness in his blue eyes. "It proves the truth
of what I've thought before," he said, "that oftentimes a man has to
sting his own honor with his own deeds to know 'tis in him."

"My honor is my own lookout," Burr said, harshly.

"And you've looked out for it better than I tho