s it pleased her
humorously to designate them, if the principal factor was not to be
mentioned? These contradictions were themselves but an indication of her
trouble, and her cry for help, just before, was the only thing he was
bound to consider. "You'll be decidedly at variance, all the same," he
said in a moment. And as she answered nothing, looking as if she scarce
understood, "You'll find yourselves thinking very differently," he
continued.

"That may easily happen, among the most united couples!" She took up her
parasol; he saw she was nervous, afraid of what he might say. "It's a
matter we can hardly quarrel about, however," she added; "for almost all
the interest is on his side. That's very natural. Pansy's after all his
daughter--not mine." And she put out her hand to wish him goodbye.

Ralph took an inward resolution that she shouldn't leave him without
his letting her know that he knew everything: it seemed too great an
opportunity to lose. "Do you know what his interest will make him say?"
he asked as he took her hand. She shook her head, rather dryly--not
discouragingly--and he went on. "It will make him say that your want
of zeal is owing to jealousy." He stopped a moment; her face made him
afraid.

"To jealousy?"

"To jealousy of his daughter."

She blushed red and threw back her head. "You're not kind," she said in
a voice that he had never heard on her lips.

"Be frank with me and you'll see," he answered.

But she made no reply; she only pulled her hand out of his own, which he
tried still to hold, and rapidly withdrew from the room. She made up her
mind to speak to Pansy, and she took an occasion on the same day, going
to the girl's room before dinner. Pansy was already dressed; she was
always in advance of the time: it seemed to illustrate her pretty
patience and the graceful stillness with which she could sit and wait.
At present she was seated, in her fresh array, before the bed-room
fire; she had blown out her candles on the completion of her toilet, in
accordance with the economical habits in which she had been brought up
sand which she was now more careful than ever to observe; so that
the room was lighted only by a couple of logs. The rooms in Palazzo
Roccanera were as spacious as they were numerous, and Pansy's virginal
bower was an immense chamber with a dark, heavily-timbered ceiling.
Its diminutive mistress, in the midst of it, appeared but a speck of
humanity, and as she got up, wi