se are Port Breedy
Harbor bonds. We have a great stake in that harbor, you know, because
I send off timber there. Open the rest at your pleasure. They'll
interest ye."

"Yes, I will, some day," said she, rising.

"Nonsense, open them now. You ought to learn a little of such matters.
A young lady of education should not be ignorant of money affairs
altogether. Suppose you should be left a widow some day, with your
husband's title-deeds and investments thrown upon your hands--"

"Don't say that, father--title-deeds; it sounds so vain!"

"It does not. Come to that, I have title-deeds myself. There, that
piece of parchment represents houses in Sherton Abbas."

"Yes, but--" She hesitated, looked at the fire, and went on in a low
voice: "If what has been arranged about me should come to anything, my
sphere will be quite a middling one."

"Your sphere ought not to be middling," he exclaimed, not in passion,
but in earnest conviction. "You said you never felt more at home, more
in your element, anywhere than you did that afternoon with Mrs.
Charmond, when she showed you her house and all her knick-knacks, and
made you stay to tea so nicely in her drawing-room--surely you did!"

"Yes, I did say so," admitted Grace.

"Was it true?"

"Yes, I felt so at the time. The feeling is less strong now, perhaps."

"Ah! Now, though you don't see it, your feeling at the time was the
right one, because your mind and body were just in full and fresh
cultivation, so that going there with her was like meeting like. Since
then you've been biding with us, and have fallen back a little, and so
you don't feel your place so strongly. Now, do as I tell ye, and look
over these papers and see what you'll be worth some day. For they'll
all be yours, you know; who have I got to leave 'em to but you?
Perhaps when your education is backed up by what these papers
represent, and that backed up by another such a set and their owner,
men such as that fellow was this morning may think you a little more
than a buffer's girl."

So she did as commanded, and opened each of the folded representatives
of hard cash that her father put before her. To sow in her heart
cravings for social position was obviously his strong desire, though in
direct antagonism to a better feeling which had hitherto prevailed with
him, and had, indeed, only succumbed that morning during the ramble.

She wished that she was not his worldly hope; the responsibility of