is the best to me. Have you ever thought that you'd like to
wear pretty gowns and drive through a green park in the spring--filled
with other carriages in which are wonderful women?"

"But I'd feel so miserable and countrified," she answered. "Are they any
happier than I am--those wonderful women?"

"Perhaps not so happy--there's a green-eyed dragon gnawing at the hearts
of most of them, and you, my nut-brown beauty, have never felt his
fangs."

"I'd like to see them," she said after a minute, and moved slowly
onward.

"Some day you may. Look here, Molly," he burst out impulsively, "I'm not
going to be sentimental about you. I haven't the least idea of making
love to you--I've had enough of that sort of rot, God knows--but I do
like you tremendously, and I want to stand to you as a big brother. I
never had a sister, you know," he added.

Something earnest and tender in his voice touched her generosity, which
overflowed so easily.

"And I never had a brother," she rejoined.

"Then, that's where I'll come in, little cousin," he answered gently,
and drawing her to him, kissed her cheek with a caress which surprised
him by its unlikeness to the ordinary manifestations of love.

His hand was still on her shoulder, when he felt her start back from his
grasp, and, turning quickly in the direction of her glance, he saw the
miller looking at them from the thicket on the opposite side of the
brook. The anger in Abel's face had distorted his handsome features
until they appeared swollen as if from drink, and for a single instant
Gay imagined that it was indeed whisky and not passion that had wrought
so brutal a change in him.

"So you've made a fool of me, too, Molly?" he said when he had swung
over the stream and stood facing her.

"You're all wrong, Revercomb," began Gay, and stopped the next instant,
because Molly's hand had shot out to silence him.

"Will you be quiet?" she flung at him impatiently; and then fixing her
eyes on Abel, she waited silently for him to finish his speech. That
her lover's fiery temper had aroused her own, Gay realized as soon as he
turned to her. Her face was pale, but her eyes blazed and never had he
felt so strongly the tie of blood that united them as he did while she
stood there waiting for Abel's accusations with a gesture which appeared
to fling them back in disdain.

"I might have known 'twas all fool's play with you--I might have known
you had flirted too much to settle down t