se baskets. But I have my books
here, and in the afternoons, behind these thick walls, one forgets the
incessant stir and restlessness of the dreadful winds outside. Just
now you were foolish enough to tempt them while you were nervous, or
worried, or listless. Take my word for it, it's a great mistake. There
is no more use fighting them, as I tell Mr. Peyton, than of fighting the
people born under them. I have my own opinion that these winds were
sent only to stir this lazy race of mongrels into activity, but they are
enough to drive us Anglo-Saxons into nervous frenzy. Don't you think
so? But you are young and energetic, and perhaps you are not affected by
them."

She spoke pleasantly and playfully, yet with a certain nervous tension
of voice and manner that seemed to illustrate her theory. At least,
Clarence, in quick sympathy with her slightest emotion, was touched by
it. There is no more insidious attraction in the persons we admire, than
the belief that we know and understand their unhappiness, and that our
admiration for them is lifted higher than a mere mutual instinctive
sympathy with beauty or strength. This adorable woman had suffered. The
very thought aroused his chivalry. It loosened, also, I fear, his quick,
impulsive tongue.

Oh, yes; he knew it. He had lived under this whip of air and sky for
three years, alone in a Spanish rancho, with only the native peons
around him, and scarcely speaking his own tongue even to his guardian.
He spent his mornings on horseback in fields like these, until the
vientos generales, as they called them, sprang up and drove him nearly
frantic; and his only relief was to bury himself among the books in his
guardian's library, and shut out the world,--just as she did. The smile
which hovered around the lady's mouth at that moment arrested Clarence,
with a quick remembrance of their former relative positions, and a
sudden conviction of his familiarity in suggesting an equality of
experience, and he blushed. But Mrs. Peyton diverted his embarrassment
with an air of interested absorption in his story, and said:--

"Then you know these people thoroughly, Mr. Brant? I am afraid that WE
do not."

Clarence had already gathered that fact within the last few days, and,
with his usual impulsive directness, said so. A slight knitting of Mrs.
Peyton's brows passed off, however, as he quickly and earnestly went on
to say that it was impossible for the Peytons in their present relations