armless, inoffensive-looking toy, but which when touched unguardedly
changed all of a sudden into a dreadful little fiend that flew right up
into your face. Such a surprise is enough to make one's hair turn gray."

"At any rate, I have vindicated myself from the charge of being,
'pretty, harmless and inoffensive,' have I not? As for the gray hairs, I
don't see one."

"I quite admired you last night," sighed Georgy, "you looked so
interesting and innocent. Now--"

"Have I then suffered in your estimation?"

"I shall remember hereafter," she said with a delightful little laugh,
"to whom I am talking. Now let us forget all about it. There are other
things I want to talk about. I want to ask you how you like Helen."

"How I like Helen?" I did not fancy her question: I had never approved
her tone regarding her cousin. "I think Miss Floyd very beautiful, and a
very elegant girl besides."

"Do you like her proud cold manner?"

"Is she proud and cold? Perhaps so to Thorpe: certainly, she is the most
unaffected child where the rest of us are concerned."

"She never forgets her wealth and position. I do not blame her: in her
place I should be quite spoiled. Think of it!" she went on, with such
eagerness that tears stood in her eyes: "Mr. Raymond left her
everything--everything except a hundred thousand dollars which he gave
to a college. She is so rich that she can lose a hundred thousand
dollars and never feel it. It did not belong to the property, but came
from a deposit which had accumulated ever since she was a baby. She
begged her grandfather to do some good with it: she did not want to have
everything herself. Might he not have given it to me?--Helen would have
liked that--but no: he hated me too well for that. It has all gone for a
dreary old professorship in the college where he graduated sixty years
ago. And I am as poor as ever!"

"But Helen is generous with her wealth, I am sure: she will do a great
deal for you."

"She gave me the money to buy the dress I am wearing, the very shoes on
my feet;" and she granted me a delicious glimpse of French slippers.
"But do you suppose I like alms? If I am a beggar, Floyd, it is from
necessity, not because I have not plenty of pride. The child means to be
good to me, I suppose, but it makes me bitterly angry with her at times
that she has the right to be gracious and condescending. I am such an
unlucky girl!"

But she laughed while she complained, and I echoed her laug