dy for it?"

"Thank you, my dear. Have you been at that place--what do you call
it?--the Dead Church, all day?"

"Yes, and the experiments went beautifully."

"Did they, did they indeed?" commented her father in an uninterested
voice. The fate of the experiments did not move him. "Isn't it very
lonely up there in that old church?"

"I prefer to be alone--generally."

"I know, I know. Forgive me; but you are a very odd woman, my dear."

"Perhaps, father; but not more so than those before me, am I? Most of
them were a little different from other people, I have been told."

"Quite right, Stella; they were all odd women, but I think that you
are quite the oddest of the family." Then, as though the subject were
disagreeable to him, he added suddenly: "Mr. Layard came to see me
to-day."

"So he told me," answered Stella.

"Oh, you have met him. I remember; he said he should call in at the Dead
Church, as he had something to say to you."

Stella determined to get the conversation over, so she forced the pace.
She was a person who liked to have disagreeable things behind her.
Drawing herself up, she answered steadily:

"He did call in, and--he said it."

"What, my dear, what?" asked Mr. Fregelius innocently.

"He asked me to marry him, father; I think he told me with your
consent."

Mr. Fregelius, auguring the very best from this openness, answered in
tones which he could not prevent from betraying an unseemly joy.

"Quite true, Stella; I told him to go on and prosper; and really I hope
he has prospered."

"Yes," said Stella reflectively.

"Then, my dear love, am I to understand that you are engaged to him?"

"Engaged to him! Certainly not," she answered.

"Then," snapped out her justly indignant parent, "how in the name of
Heaven has he prospered?"

"By my refusing him, of course. We should never have suited each other
at all; he would have been miserable if I had married him."

Mr. Fregelius groaned in bitterness of spirit.

"Oh, Stella, Stella," he cried, "what a disappointment!"

"Why should you be disappointed, father dear?" she asked gently.

"Why? You stand there and ask why, when I hear that my daughter, who
will scarcely have a sixpence--or at least very few of them--has refused
a young man with between seventeen and eighteen thousand pounds a
year--that's his exact income, for he told me himself, a most estimable
churchman, who would have been a pillar of strength to me, a man whom
I sho