, and gathered it up in a
last defiance. "As long as I live I'll never forgive you!" she cried.

Mr. Royall made no answer. He sat and pondered with sunken head, his
veined hands clasped about the arms of his chair. Age seemed to have
come down on him as winter comes on the hills after a storm. At length
he looked up.

"Charity, you say you don't care; but you're the proudest girl I know,
and the last to want people to talk against you. You know there's always
eyes watching you: you're handsomer and smarter than the rest, and
that's enough. But till lately you've never given them a chance. Now
they've got it, and they're going to use it. I believe what you say, but
they won't.... It was Mrs. Tom Fry seen you going in... and two or three
of them watched for you to come out again.... You've been with the fellow
all day long every day since he come here... and I'm a lawyer, and I know
how hard slander dies." He paused, but she stood motionless, without
giving him any sign of acquiescence or even of attention. "He's a
pleasant fellow to talk to--I liked having him here myself. The young
men up here ain't had his chances. But there's one thing as old as the
hills and as plain as daylight: if he'd wanted you the right way he'd
have said so."

Charity did not speak. It seemed to her that nothing could exceed the
bitterness of hearing such words from such lips.

Mr. Royall rose from his seat. "See here, Charity Royall: I had a
shameful thought once, and you've made me pay for it. Isn't that score
pretty near wiped out?... There's a streak in me I ain't always master
of; but I've always acted straight to you but that once. And you've
known I would--you've trusted me. For all your sneers and your mockery
you've always known I loved you the way a man loves a decent woman. I'm
a good many years older than you, but I'm head and shoulders above this
place and everybody in it, and you know that too. I slipped up once, but
that's no reason for not starting again. If you'll come with me I'll
do it. If you'll marry me we'll leave here and settle in some big town,
where there's men, and business, and things doing. It's not too late for
me to find an opening.... I can see it by the way folks treat me when I
go down to Hepburn or Nettleton...."

Charity made no movement. Nothing in his appeal reached her heart, and
she thought only of words to wound and wither. But a growing lassitude
restrained her. What did anything matter that he wa