she's really made of."

While Mr. Clare was addressing these words to Miss Garth, Mr. Pendril
had taken the opportunity of speaking to Norah. "Before I go back to
town," he said, "I should like to have a word with you in private. From
what has passed today, Miss Vanstone, I have formed a very high opinion
of your discretion; and, as an old friend of your father's, I want to
take the freedom of speaking to you about your sister."

Before Norah could answer, she was summoned, in compliance with Mr.
Clare's request, to the conference with the servants. Mr. Pendril
followed Miss Garth, as a matter of course. When the three were out in
the hall, Mr. Clare re-entered the room, closed the door, and signed
peremptorily to Magdalen to take a chair.

She obeyed him in silence. He took a turn up and down the room, with his
hands in the side-pockets of the long, loose, shapeless coat which he
habitually wore.

"How old are you?" he said, stopping suddenly, and speaking to her with
the whole breadth of the room between them.

"I was eighteen last birthday," she answered, humbly, without looking up
at him.

"You have shown extraordinary courage for a girl of eighteen. Have you
got any of that courage left?"

She clasped her hands together, and wrung them hard. A few tears
gathered in her eyes, and rolled slowly over her cheeks.

"I can't give Frank up," she said, faintly. "You don't care for me, I
know; but you used to care for my father. Will you try to be kind to me
for my father's sake?"

The last words died away in a whisper; she could say no more. Never
had she felt the illimitable power which a woman's love possesses of
absorbing into itself every other event, every other joy or sorrow of
her life, as she felt it then. Never had she so tenderly associated
Frank with the memory of her lost parents, as at that moment. Never had
the impenetrable atmosphere of illusion through which women behold the
man of their choice--the atmosphere which had blinded her to all that
was weak, selfish, and mean in Frank's nature--surrounded him with a
brighter halo than now, when she was pleading with the father for the
possession of the son. "Oh, don't ask me to give him up!" she said,
trying to take courage, and shuddering from head to foot. In the next
instant, she flew to the opposite extreme, with the suddenness of a
flash of lightning. "I won't give him up!" she burst out violently. "No!
not if a thousand fathers ask me!"

"I am