If she were not Sir William Heath's wife I should
be ready to do homage at her shrine with all my heart."

"Nonsense! Has she any education? Can she converse respectably?" demanded
Mrs. Farnum, with a frown at her daughter's enthusiasm.

"She is a perfect lady, and her language is beyond criticism--she is fit
to be the wife of any peer."

"Gracious! Sadie, how you annoy me!" ejaculated Mrs. Farnum, angrily.
"Just think of her antecedents."

"Well, the girl is not to blame if her father was a scamp, and should not
be made to suffer for his sins," responded her daughter, who was not
naturally bad, and but for her mother's influence, would even now have
been won to a better disposition by Virgie's sweetness.

"What rank folly you are talking!" retorted her mother. "No girl has a
right to marry a respectable man with such a stain on her name."

"Perhaps she does not know anything about her father's crime."

"Pshaw! She was fifteen years old when they had to flee from San
Francisco; she could not help knowing that something was wrong, and as she
grew older she could not fail to understand it. From the way you talk it
is evident that you yourself have fallen in love with the woman who has
cheated you out of your husband."

"Perhaps I have, mamma," Sadie answered, with a spice of defiance and
wickedly taking pleasure in working her mother up to a certain pitch. "She
looked so pretty just now--she has the loveliest complexion, just clear
red and white, with such dark blue eyes that they seem almost black when
she is animated, and such pretty waving brown hair, while her features are
pure and delicate Her taste, too, is exquisite--her dress was just the
right shade to set off her clear skin; she had the daintiest little
matron's cap on her head--real thread, too--while a handful of blush-roses
in her belt made her look too lovely for anything."

"Do hush, Sadie; you irritate me beyond endurance; one would think that
you were only too ready to renounce all your hopes to this plebeian who
has stolen your lover," and Mrs. Farnum turned upon her daughter as if
ready to shake her for her folly.

"Mamma!" she cried, passionately, and bursting into tears, for she had
been working herself up as well, "when I am away from her I hate her for
having won him from me, and I am almost ready to do anything desperate;
but when I am with her she disarms me; there is something about the girl
that almost makes me love her. If you could