no other object worth spending your
energies upon."

"I confess," said Georgy, with a peculiar glance at Mr. Floyd, "some men
are worth any effort."

Thorpe, after many vain attempts to engage Helen in conversation, took
his leave, and when I went to the door with him he begged me to stroll
down the grounds to the gate. He had a three-mile walk before him for
his pains in coming home in the carriage with Miss Lenox, but he vowed
that the pleasure he always found at The Headlands recompensed him for
any labor. He burst into enthusiastic talk about the old times at
Belfield: he remembered the charm of my mother's house, he said, and the
good times we boys had enjoyed together. How was Holt now-a-days? and
where was Dart? Was it true that Jack himself had thrown Miss Lenox
over, or was the fault on her side? "She is much admired," he went on.
"How do you think her looking? She has many lovers and two or three
suitors. There is Judge Talbot, with his mind set on winning her."

"What category of her admirers do you come in?"

"I am neither lover nor suitor," he rejoined lightly. "Miss Lenox and I
are on excellent terms of camaraderie--no more. Were I to admire any
woman from my heart, it would be the one I have just left. Is she not
the rarest, sweetest, dearest Lady Disdain in the world?"

"I cannot guess to whom you refer," said I, "for I am at a loss how to
excuse the familiarity of your speech in reference to any lady in the
house except Miss Lenox."

"Now, Randolph," exclaimed Thorpe, putting his hand on my shoulder, "you
shall not bluff me off so. I would cut my tongue out before I used it
too freely in praising a young lady like Miss Floyd. I knew her as a
child: her father is my best friend, my benefactor. Remember, if I spoke
too freely, that my Southern blood gives me more trouble than the chilly
currents in your Northern veins."

He spoke so eagerly, and with such perfect temper, that I was ashamed of
my momentary outburst. I shook hands with him cordially at the gate, and
walked back slowly, looking at the heavy bank of fog lying in the east
over which the moon was peering, and thinking of my mother, of Helen,
perhaps a little of Georgy, although my heart was swelling with anger
toward her still: so I told myself again and again. Yet how beautiful
she was, with a new and bewildering tenderness in her manner! What had
softened her? Was it suffering?

When I returned to the parlor she had gone up stairs,