yourself--or kind to me?"

The quiet reproach of his tone disturbed her.

"I do not mean to be unkind," she said, her voice not quite steady,
"and indeed I have all that I need. Nora has more than time to attend
to me, and as for company, it is because I do not want it that I do
not have it."

"And you think you can live without companionship?" he said. "You
will find you are mistaken; but of that I have no right to speak.
There is one subject, however, on which I do claim this right, and it
is the fulfilment of this purpose which has brought me to America."

"You came all this way to see me?" she said, lifting her brows as if
in gentle deprecation. "You were always kind." Her voice broke and
she said no more.

"It is not a question of kindness," he said. "It is a matter of the
simplest right and duty. Will you hear me? Are you able to hear me
to-night, or shall I come again to-morrow?"

"Speak now," she said. "I am perfectly well, and am ready to hear
whatever you may have to say."

Her voice gave proof of a recovered self-control. The necessity of
making this a final interview between them was borne in upon her, and
sitting very still and erect, with her hands clasped tightly
together, she waited to hear what he might say.

"Your leaving England so suddenly," he began, "was, as I need not
say, a disappointment to me. I had hoped to change your mind and
purpose concerning the acceptance not only of money which is your own
by legal right, but of such as is also yours by every rational law of
possession. It was to me an insupportable idea that you should go
away without the means of living as becomes your rank and station."

Bettina, with a rather chill smile, shook her head.

"Rank and station I have none," she said. "I have money enough to
live as becomes my mother's child; that I am, and no more. It is the
only bond to the past which I acknowledge. The name and title which I
bore a little while were never mine in a real and true sense. I do
not care to speak of it; it is all past; but the very fact that your
cousin saw fit to leave me with what you call a mere pittance shows
that he felt the distance, the lack of union, between us, as I felt
and feel it."

It was a relief to her to say this much. He could gather nothing from
it, and she wanted him to know that she had freed her soul from
every vestige of its bondage to the man whom she chose to designate
as his cousin rather than by any relationship to