n of the dead."

They were both feeling uncomfortable. Carmen was shivering. But, being
a woman, and tactful, she recovered her head first. "It is a study for
myself, Don Royal; I shall make you another."

And she slipped away, as she thought, out of the subject and his
presence.

But she was mistaken; in the evening he renewed the conversation. Carmen
began to fence, not from cowardice or deceit, as the masculine reader
would readily infer, but from some wonderful feminine instinct that told
her to be cautious. But he got from her the fact, to him before unknown,
that she was the niece of his main antagonist, and, being a gentleman,
so redoubled his attentions and his courtesy that Mrs. Plodgitt made up
her mind that it was a foregone conclusion, and seriously reflected as
to what she should wear on the momentous occasion. But that night poor
Carmen cried herself to sleep, resolving that she would hereafter cast
aside her wicked uncle for this good-hearted Americano, yet never once
connected her innocent penmanship with the deadly feud between them.
Women--the best of them--are strong as to collateral facts, swift
of deduction, but vague as children are to the exact statement or
recognition of premises. It is hardly necessary to say that Carmen
had never thought of connecting any act of hers with the claims of her
uncle, and the circumstance of the signature she had totally forgotten.

The masculine reader will now understand Carmen's confusion and blushes,
and believe himself an ass to have thought them a confession of original
affection. The feminine reader will, by this time, become satisfied that
the deceitful minx's sole idea was to gain the affections of Thatcher.
And really I don't know who is right.

Nevertheless she painted a sketch of Thatcher,--which now adorns the
Company's office in San Francisco,--in which the property is laid out in
pleasing geometrical lines, and the rosy promise of the future instinct
in every touch of the brush. Then, having earned her "wage," as she
believed, she became somewhat cold and shy to Thatcher. Whereat that
gentleman redoubled his attentions, seeing only in her presence a
certain meprise, which concerned her more than himself. The niece of
his enemy meant nothing more to him than an interesting girl,--to
be protected always,--to be feared, never. But even suspicion may be
insidiously placed in noble minds.

Mistress Plodgitt, thus early estopped of matchmaking, of cou