bel Armstrong, with a girlish skip, came
suddenly to her niece's side. "Good morning, Mr. Roderick McRae. Good
morning, niecy dear! Come here a moment and walk with me, Leslie
darling. I want to ask you something." She slipped her arm into the
girl's and drew her back. "Here, Mr. McRae, you walk by Miss Murray,
just for a moment, please."

She shoved Helen forward into Leslie's place, and pulling her niece
close, whispered fiercely.

"You are a young idiot, Leslie Graham! I heard Mrs. Captain Willoughby
and the Baldwin girls laughing and talking about you just this minute
as they came out of church. I am just deadly ashamed. How can we ever
keep our position in society if you act so? Anna Baldwin said you were
simply throwing yourself at that young McRae's head--and his father a
common farmer! And his _Aunt_!"

The girl jerked her arm from Miss Annabel's grasp, her eyes and cheeks
blazing. "Anna Baldwin is crazy about him herself!" she cried
violently. "And she's made a fool of herself more times than I can
tell! And his father is far better than your father ever was, or mine
either!" She stopped as some one looked at her in passing. "I shall
just do exactly as I please, Aunt Annabel Armstrong," she added
determinedly. "It's just like an old maid to be always interfering in
other people's affairs!"

Miss Annabel turned white with anger. She was proud of her niece, and
yet she almost disliked her. Leslie, young and gay and successful, the
inheritor of everything for which her aunt had scrimped and striven and
hungered all her life and never attained, was a constant source of
irritation and discontent to Miss Annabel. Her heart and hopes were as
young as Leslie's, and she was forced to find herself pushed aside into
the place of age, while this radiant girl walked all unheeding into
everything that her girlhood should have been. And this intimation
concerning her age and estate was unbearable. She grew intensely quiet.

"Leslie," she said, "you may heed me or not as you wish. But if you
had eyes in your head, you would see for yourself that that young man
doesn't care the snap of his finger for you and all your money. He's
madly in love with Helen Murray. He's always hanging about Rosemount!"
she added, growing reckless. "He was there only last night. Just look
at him now!"

The startled eyes of the girl obeyed. Roderick was walking beside
Helen Murray, and looking down at her with the j