this is yours. Patsey will make a fire."

"It's rather gloomy, isn't it?"

"Shall I bring you wine? I have the key to the cellar."

"Brandy, if you please. The place feels as if it had been shut up for a
century."

"It was your uncle's room. Do you mind sleeping here? It's the easiest
to get ready."

"Not with a fire--and I may have a lamp, I suppose?"

At his question Patsey appeared with an armful of resinous pine, and a
few minutes later, a cheerful blaze was chasing the shadows up the great
brick chimney. When Molly returned with the brandy, Gay was leaning
against the mantelpiece idly burning a bunch of dried cat-tails he had
taken from a blue-and-white china vase.

"It's a gloomy old business, isn't it?" he observed, glancing from the
high canopied bed with its hangings of faded damask to an engraving of
the Marriage of Pocahontas between the dormer-windows. "If there are
ghosts about, I suppose I'd better prepare to face them."

"Only in the west wing, the darkies say, but I think they are bats.
As for those in the haunt's walk, I never believed in them. Patsey is
bringing your brandy. Can I do anything else for you?"

"Only tell me," he burst out, "why in thunder the whole county hates
me?"

She laughed shortly. "I can't tell you--wait and find out."

Here audacity half angered, half paralyzed him.

"What a vixen you are!" he observed presently with grudging respect.

The crimson flooded her face, and he watched her teeth gleam
dangerously, as if she were bracing herself for a retort. The impulse to
torment her was strong in him, and he yielded to it much as a boy might
have teased a small captive animal of the woods.

"With such a temper you ought to have been an ugly woman," he said, "but
you're so pretty I'm strongly inclined to kiss you."

"If you do, I'll strike you," she gasped.

The virgin in her showed fierce and passionate, not shy and fleeting.
That she was by instinct savagely pure, he could tell by the look of
her.

"I believe it so perfectly that I've no intention of trying," he
rejoined.

"I'm not half so pretty as my mother was," she said after a pause.

Her loyalty to the unfortunate Janet touched him to sympathy. "Don't
quarrel with me, Molly," he pleaded, "for I mean to be friends with
you."

As he uttered the words, he was conscious of a pleasant feeling of
self-approbation while his nature vibrated to the lofty impulse. This
sensation was so gratifying while it laste