our life.
Always! It's awful!"

Minnie heaved a sigh, and sat apparently meditating on the enormous
baseness of the man who saved a lady's life and then proposed; and it
was not until Mrs. Willoughby had spoken twice that she was recalled
to herself.

"What did you tell him?" was her sister's question.

"Why, what could I tell him?"

"What!" cried Mrs. Willoughby; "you don't--"

"Now, Kitty, I think it's very unkind in you, when I want all your
sympathy, to be _so_ horrid."

"Well, tell it your own way, Minnie dearest."

Minnie sat for a time regarding vacancy with a soft, sad, and piteous
expression in her large blue eyes; with her head also a little on one
side, and her delicate hands gently clasped in front of her.

[Illustration: "ANOTHER MAN!"]

"You see, Kitty darling, he took me out riding, and--he took me to the
place where I had met him, and then he proposed. Well, you know, I
didn't know what to say. He was _so_ earnest, and _so_ despairing. And
then, you know, Kitty dearest, he had saved my life, and so--"

"And so?"

"Well, I told him I didn't know, and was shockingly confused, and then
we got up quite a scene. He swore that he would go to Mexico, though
why I can't imagine; and I really wish he had; but I was frightened at
the time, and I cried; and then he got worse, and I told him not to;
whereupon he went into raptures, and began to call me no end of
names--spooney names, you know; and I--oh, I did _so_ want him to
stop!--I think I must have promised him all that he wanted; and when I
got home I was frightened out of my poor little wits, and cried all
night."

"Poor dear child!" exclaimed Mrs. Willoughby, with tender sympathy.
"What a wretch!"

"No, he wasn't a wretch at all; he was awfully handsome, only, you
know, he--was--so--_aw_fully persevering, and kept _so_ at my heels;
but I hurried home from Brighton, and thought I had got rid of him."

"And hadn't you?"

"Oh dear, no," said Minnie, mournfully. "On the day after my arrival
there came a letter; and, you know, I had to answer it; and then
another; and so it went on--"

"Oh, Minnie! why didn't you tell me before?"

"How could I when you were off in that horrid Scotland? I _always_
hated Scotland."

"You might have told papa."

"I couldn't. I think papa's cruel _too_. He doesn't care for me at
all. Why didn't he find out our correspondence and intercept it, the
way papas always do in novels? If I were _his_ papa I'd not l