nt of the affections
is not always logical. And it had its effect on the girl.

"I wasn't thinking of THAT," she said. "It's that you don't know your
own mind."

"If I said that I would stay and accept your father's offer, would you
think that I did?" he asked quickly.

"I should wait and see what you actually DID do," she replied.

"But if I stayed--and--and--if I told you that I stayed on YOUR
account--to be with you and near you only--would you think that a
proof?" He spoke hesitatingly, for his lips were dry with a nervousness
he had not known before.

"I might, if you told father you expected to be engaged on those terms.
For it concerns HIM as much as me. And HE engages you, and not I.
Otherwise I'd think it was only your talk."

Reddy looked at her in astonishment. There was not the slightest trace
of coyness, coquetry, or even raillery in her clear, honest eyes, and
yet it would seem as if she had taken his proposition in its fullest
sense as a matrimonial declaration, and actually referred him to her
father. He was pleased, frightened, and utterly unprepared.

"But what would YOU say, Nelly?" He drew closer to her and held out both
his hands. But she retreated a step and slipped her own behind her.

"Better see what father says first," she said quietly. "You may change
your mind again and go back to San Francisco."

He was confused, and reddened again. But he had become accustomed to her
ways; rather, perhaps, he had begun to recognize the quaint justice that
underlaid them, or, possibly, some better self of his own, that had been
buried under bitterness and sloth and struggled into life. "But whatever
he says," he returned eagerly, "cannot alter my feelings to YOU. It can
only alter my position here, and you say you are above being influenced
by that. Tell me, Nelly--dear Nelly! have you nothing to say to me, AS
I AM, or is it only to your father's manager that you would speak?" His
voice had an unmistakable ring of sincerity in it, and even startled
him--half rascal as he was!

The young girl's clear, scrutinizing eyes softened; her red resolute
lips trembled slightly and then parted, the upper one hovering a little
to one side over her white teeth. It was Nelly's own peculiar smile, and
its serious piquancy always thrilled him. But she drew a little farther
back from his brightening eyes, her hands still curled behind her, and
said, with the faintest coquettish toss of her head toward the hill: "I