gers.

"Well?" suggested Aimee.

"He is as handsome and--as tall, and he dresses as well."

"Do you like him as well?" said Aimee.

"Ye-es--no. I have not known him long enough to tell you."

"Well," returned Aimee, "let me tell you. As I said before, I do not
think it wise to judge people from first impressions, but this I do
know, _I_ don't like him as I like Mr. Gowan, and I never shall. He is
not to be relied upon, that Gerald Chandos; I saw it in his eyes."

And she set her chin upon her hand, and her small, round, fair face
covered itself all at once with an anxious cloud.

She kept a quiet watch upon Mollie after this, and in the weeks that
followed she was puzzled, and not only puzzled, but baffled outright
many a time. This first visit of Mr. Gerald Chandos was not his last.
His business brought him again and again, and when the time came that he
had no pretence of business, he was on sufficiently familiar terms with
them all to make calls of pleasure. So he did just as Ralph Gowan had
done, slipped into his groove of friend and acquaintance unobtrusively,
and was made welcome as other people were,--just as any sufficiently
harmless individual would have' been under the same circumstances.
There was no dragon of high renown to create social disturbances in
Vagabondia.

"As long as a man behaves himself, where's the odds?" said Phil; and no
one ever disagreed with him.

But Mr. Gerald Chandos had not been to the house more than three times
before Aimee found cause to wonder. She discovered that Ralph Gowan was
not so enthusiastically attached to him, after all; and furthermore
she had her reasons for thinking that Gowan was rather disturbed at
his advent, and would have preferred that he had not been adopted so
complacently.

"If Dolly was at home," she said to herself, "I should be inclined to
fancy he was a trifle jealous; and if he cared just a little more for
Mollie, I might think he was jealous; but Dolly is away, and though he
is fond of Mollie, and thinks her pretty, he does n't care for her in
that way exactly, so there must be some other reason. He is not the sort
of person to have likes or dislikes without reason."

In her own sage style she approved of Ralph Gowan just as she approved
of Griffith. And then, as I have said, Mollie puzzled her. It was
astonishing how the child altered, and how she began to bloom out, and
adopt independent, womanly airs and graces. She took a new and importa