ed. It's h er nature to be kind."

Euphrasia crossed the room swiftly, and seized his arm again.

"She loves you, Austen," she cried; "she loves you. Do you think that
I'd love her, that I'd plead for her, if she didn't?"

Austen's breath came deeply. He disengaged himself, and went to the
window.

"No," he said, "you don't know. You can't--know. I have only seen her--a
few times. She lives a different life--and with other people. She will
marry a man who can give her more."

"Do you think I could be deceived?" exclaimed Euphrasia, almost
fiercely. "It's as true as the sun shining on that mountain. You believe
she loves the Englishman, but I tell you she loves you--you."

He turned towards her.

"How do you know?" he asked, as though he were merely curious.

"Because I'm a woman, and she's a woman," said Euphrasia. "Oh, she
didn't confess it. If she had, I shouldn't think so much of her. But she
told me as plain as though she had spoken it in words, before she left
this room."

Austen shook his head again.

"Phrasie," he said, "I'm afraid you've been building castles in Spain."
And he went out, and across to the stable to harness Pepper.

Austen did not believe Euphrasia. On that eventful evening when Victoria
had called at Jabe Jenney's, the world's aspect had suddenly changed for
him; old values had faded,--values which, after all, had been but tints
and glows,--and sterner but truer colours took their places. He saw
Victoria's life in a new perspective,--one in which his was but a small
place in the background of her numerous beneficences; which was, after
all, the perspective in which he had first viewed it. But, by degrees,
the hope that she loved him had grown and grown until it had become
unconsciously the supreme element of his existence,--the hope that stole
sweetly into his mind with the morning light, and stayed him through the
day, and blended into the dreams of darkness.

By inheritance, by tradition, by habits of thought, Austen Vane was an
American,--an American as differentiated from the citizen of any other
nation upon the earth. The French have an expressive phrase in speaking
of a person as belonging to this or that world, meaning the circle by
which the life of an individual is bounded; the true American recognizes
these circles--but with complacency, and with a sure knowledge of his
destiny eventually to find himself within the one for which he is best
fitted by his talents and his tas