the general,
courteously, but with a smile lurking under his white moustache. "It
isn't wise to do it, and maybe I could convince you of the fact, if I
knew what particular nothing is making you unhappy."

The general had often noticed the eager, attentive little face at the
table, and had been attracted by its bright intelligence. Mary Lee
blinked up with red, tear-swollen eyes into the fatherly old face with
its crown of white hair, and recognised the stamp of the true knight
in every aristocratic feature. With a sudden, instinctive feeling of
confidence she cried out: "You are not like the rest. You would
understand, and I must tell somebody."

It was a pitiful little tale that she poured out to her sympathetic
listener, revealing a sweet, unspoiled nature as she laid bare her
fond girlish hopes and longings, in a way that would have surprised
her had she realised what she was doing. It gave him an insight into
her home life, too, and when she had finished, he could appreciate
what a cruel wound had been given her sensitive heart by the words
which disparaged her father. For a minute after she stopped speaking,
the general sat quite still. Then he said:

"Will you take the advice of an old man who has lived a long time and
learned a great many lessons? Don't go home to-morrow, as it is your
first impulse to do. Be brave and unselfish enough not to say anything
to your friend that will mar her enjoyment." He broke off suddenly and
sat musing a minute. "Do you know Browning's 'Saul'?" he asked, after
a little pause. Mary Lee nodded, a gleam of pleasure lighting her eyes
for an instant.

"Then you will remember these lines:

"'Round me the sheep
Fed in silence--above, the one eagle wheeled slow as
in sleep;
And I lay in my hollow and mused on the world that
might lie
'Neath his ken, though I saw but the strip 'twixt the hill
and the sky.'

"Now these girls who have hurt you so cruelly, have done it solely
through ignorance. They have never seen anything beyond their own
little strip ''twixt the hill and the sky,' and they can only follow a
leader like a flock of pretty sheep. It is true that they ought to
have a broader horizon than the boundary of the little social circle
in which they were born, but you must make allowances for them, my
child. From their cradles they have been hedged round with
conventionalities which have made them short-sighted. It