tell me all about
the others who will be staying there. Do you know my cousin Marcia?"

"Miss Amherst? Yes. She is very handsome, but too statuesque to please
me."

"Am I better-looking?"

"Ten thousand times."

"And Philip Shadwell; he is my cousin also. Do you know him?"

"Very intimately. He is handsome also, but of a dark Moorish sort of
beauty. Not a popular man, by any means. Too reserved,--cold,--I don't
know what it is. Have you any other cousins?"

"Not on my mother's side. Grandpa had but three children, you know,--my
mother, and Philip's mother, and Marcia's father: he married an Italian
actress, which must have been a terrible _mesalliance_, and yet
Marcia is made much of, while I am not even recognized. Does it not
sound unfair?"

"Unaccountable. Especially as I have often heard your mother was his
favorite child!"

"Perhaps that explains his harshness. To be deceived by one we love
engenders the bitterest hatred of all. And yet how could he hate poor
mamma? John says she had the most beautiful, lovable face."

"I can well believe it," replied he, gazing with undisguised admiration
upon the perfect profile beside him.

"And Marcia will be an heiress, I suppose?"

"She and Philip will divide everything, people say, the place, of
course, going to Philip. Lucky he! Any one might envy him. You know
they both live there entirely, although Marcia's mother is alive and
resides somewhere abroad. Philip was in some dragoon regiment, but sold
out about two years ago: debt, I fancy, was the cause, or something
like it."

"Marcia is the girl you ought to have fallen in love with, Ted."

"No, thank you; I very much prefer her cousin. Besides, I should have
no chance, as she and Philip are engaged to each other: they thought it
a pity to divide the twenty thousand pounds a year. Do you know, Molly,
I never knew what it was to covet my neighbor's goods until I met you?
so you have that to answer for; but it does seem hard that one man
should be so rich, and another so poor."

"Are you poor, Teddy?"

"Very. Will that make you like me less?"

"Probably it will make me like you more," replies she, with a
bewitching smile, stroking down the hand that supports the obnoxious
umbrella (the other is supporting herself) almost tenderly. "It is only
the very nicest men that haven't a farthing in the world. I have no
money either, and if I had I could not keep it: so we are well met."

"But think what a bad ma