fully and admiringly wandering
over every characteristic detail of the charming apartment, here raised
them to its handsome mistress, with an apologetic air and a "No" of such
unaffected and complete abstraction, that she was again dumbfounded.
Certainly, it could not be Mary in whom he was interested.

Abandoning any further inquisition for the present, she let the talk
naturally fall upon the books scattered about the tables. The young
man knew them all far better than she did, with a cognate knowledge of
others of which she had never heard. She found herself in the attitude
of receiving information from this boy, whose boyishness, however,
seemed to have evaporated, whose tone had changed with the subject, and
who now spoke with the conscious reserve of knowledge. Decidedly, she
must have grown rusty in her seclusion. This came, she thought bitterly,
of living alone; of her husband's preoccupation with the property; of
Susy's frivolous caprices. At the end of eight years to be outstripped
by a former cattle-boy of her husband's, and to have her French
corrected in a matter of fact way by this recent pupil of the priests,
was really too bad! Perhaps he even looked down upon Susy! She smiled
dangerously but suavely.

"You must have worked so hard to educate yourself from nothing, Mr.
Brant. You couldn't read, I think, when you first came to us. No? Could
you really? I know it has been very difficult for Susy to get on with
her studies in proportion. We had so much to first eradicate in the way
of manners, style, and habits of thought which the poor child had
picked up from her companions, and for which SHE was not responsible.
Of course, with a boy that does not signify," she added, with feline
gentleness.

But the barbed speech glanced from the young man's smoothly smiling
abstraction.

"Ah, yes. But those were happy days, Mrs. Peyton," he answered, with an
exasperating return of his previous boyish enthusiasm, "perhaps because
of our ignorance. I don't think that Susy and I are any happier for
knowing that the plains are not as flat as we believed they were, and
that the sun doesn't have to burn a hole in them every night when it
sets. But I know I believed that YOU knew everything. When I once saw
you smiling over a book in your hand, I thought it must be a different
one from any that I had ever seen, and perhaps made expressly for you.
I can see you there still. Do you know," quite confidentially, "that you
re