evening, saw him from her window, going straight as an arrow. The sight
arrested her. She called Sepia, who for a few nights had slept in her
room, to the window.

"There, now!" she said, "there is a man who looks a man! Good Heavens!
how recklessly he rides! I don't believe Mr. Redmain could keep on a
horse's back if he tried!" Sepia looked, half asleep. Her eyes grew
wider. Her sleepiness vanished.

"Something is wrong with the proud yeoman!" she said. "He is either mad
or in love, probably both! We shall hear more of this morning's ride,
Hesper, as I hope to die a maid!--That's a man I should like to know
now," she added, carelessly. "There is some go in him! I have a
weakness for the kind of man that _could_ shake the life out of me if I
offended him."

"Are you so anxious, then, to make a good, submissive wife?" said
Hesper.

"I should take the very first opportunity of offending him--mortally,
as they call it. It would be worth one's while with a man like that."

"Why? How? For what good?"

"Just to see him look. There is nothing on earth so scrumptious as
having a grand burst of passion all to yourself." She drew in her
breath like one in pain. "My God!" she said, "to see it come and go!
the white and the red! the tugging at the hair! the tears and the
oaths, and the cries and the curses! To know that you have the man's
heart-strings stretched on your violin, and that with one dash of your
bow, one tiniest twist of a peg, you can make him shriek!"

"Sepia!" said Hesper, "I think Darwin must be right, and some of us at
least are come from--"

"Tiger-cats? or perhaps the Tasmanian devil?" suggested Sepia, with one
of her scornful half-laughs.

But the same instant she turned white as death, and sat softly down on
the nearest chair.

"Good Heavens, Sepia! what is the matter? I did not mean it," said
Hesper, remorsefully, thinking she had wounded her, and that she had
broken down in the attempt to conceal the pain.

"It's not that, Hesper, dear. Nothing you could say would hurt me,"
replied Sepia, drawing breath sharply. "It's a pain that comes
sometimes--a sort of picture drawn in pains--something I saw once."

"A picture?"

"Oh! well!--picture, or what you will!--Where's the difference, once
it's gone and done with? Yet it will get the better of me now and then
for a moment! Some day, when you are married, and a little more used to
men and their ways, I will tell you. My little cousin is much too