work for my
own bread if needs must be. But I will not owe it to the generosity
of Reuben Harmer, after all that has passed. I should be humbled to
the very dust!"

The Master Builder looked at his daughter in amaze. He had never
seen Gertrude quite so moved before.

"Why, child," he exclaimed in astonishment. "I always thought that
thou hadst a liking for the youth!"

Then at that word Gertrude burst suddenly into tears and cried:

"I love him as mine own soul, and I am not ashamed to own it. But
that is the very reason why I will have none of him now. I will not
be thrown upon his generosity like a bundle of damaged goods. Let
him seek a wife who can bring him a modest fortune with her, and
who has never been scornfully denied to him before. O father! can
you not see that I can never consent to be his now?

"O mother, mother! why did you do me this ill?"

The father felt that the situation had got beyond him. Never much
versed in the ways of women, he was fairly puzzled by his
daughter's strange method of taking his confidence. He knew, of
course, of the tactics of his wife, which he had deplored at the
time, though he had been unable to bring her to a better frame of
mind; but since the young people liked each other, and since madam
was in her grave, it seemed absurd to let a shadow stand between
them and their happiness. Perhaps if left to herself Gertrude would
reach that conclusion of her own accord, and the Master Builder
rose to go without pressing the matter further.

Gertrude, left alone, was weeping silently and bitterly beside the
child's cot, when she was aware of a little short laugh almost at
her elbow, and a familiar voice said in sharp accents:

"Good child! I like a woman with a spirit of her own. Go on as you
have begun, and don't let him think he is to have it all his own
way. Lovers are all very well, but husbands soon show their wives
how cheap they hold them when they have won them all too cheap.
Throw him aside in scorn! Let him not think or see that you care a
snap of the fingers for him. That will rivet the fetters all the
faster; and when you have got him like a tame bear at the end of a
chain--why then you can make up your mind at leisure what you will
end by doing."

Gertrude sprang up suddenly, and faced Lady Scrope with flushed
cheeks and glowing eyes.

The little witch-like woman with her black-handled stick and her
mobcap was no unfrequent visitor to this shut-up house. The