petuosity, and stood for a moment with my head between his hands
looking into my eyes.

"I believe you have in you the making of a noble woman, my dear," he
said proudly. "You have your mother's sweet disposition, and also I
think my fixity of purpose."

I lay awake that night for hours. It seemed to me that I had grown five
years older in a single day, and I felt a new responsibility in living.
My father's trust and generosity had stirred me deeply, and I made many
a solemn vow not to prove unworthy of such confidence. But athwart the
satisfaction these thoughts inspired, rose the recollection of what he
had said regarding the insincerity of men. I had of course read in
novels of fortune-hunters, but no suspicion of their existence within
the pale of the polite society of which I was so soon to form a part had
ever marred the rosy simplicity of my imagination. This was my first
peep at the world's wickedness, and it shocked me to think that human
nature could be so base.

I had seen but little of my Aunt Agnes during the autumn, perhaps
because I more than half suspected she did not sympathize with the plans
and preparations for my social education. I remembered some years
before, at the time when the question of my attending dancing-school was
being debated, to have heard her express disapproval of girls who
frittered away their time and health in the pursuit of what she called
"vain pleasures." I had not conversed with her on the subject, but I had
obtained an intimation from her short and acrid manner on the one or two
occasions when we had met of late that she was quite aware of what was
going on, and condemned it unequivocally.

Although I knew that Aunt Agnes was very fond of me, and I in turn loved
and respected her, she was apt to inspire me with awe even on ordinary
occasions. Her character was as upright as her figure, which in defiance
of the relaxed customs of the day was always arrayed against a
straight-backed chair. Conventionalities of every sort were an
abomination to her. Black silk was the full extent of her condescension
in the matter of what she was pleased to call Babylonian attire, and she
had no patience with the ordinary vanities of her sex.

She received me frostily when I went to visit her a few days after the
conversation with my father, and suffered me to kiss both her cheeks in
turn without evincing a sign of being mollified. Remembering that she
was fond of directness, I opened fire