nd when she said one day that she wanted to go to the school at St.
Penfer and learn all about the strange seas and the strange lands that
were in the world, her father and mother were quite thrilled by her
great ambition. But she had her desire, and for three years she went
to the private school at St. Penfer, and among the girls gathered
there made many friends. Chief among these was Elizabeth Tresham, the
daughter of a gentleman who had bought, with the salvage of a large
fortune, the small Cornish estate on which he lived, or rather fretted
away life in vain regrets over an irrevocable past. Elizabeth was his
only daughter, but he had a son who was much older than Elizabeth--a
handsome, gay young man about whom little was known in St. Penfer.

That little was not altogether favourable. It was understood that he
painted pictures and played very finely on the piano, and every one
could see that he dressed in the most fashionable manner and that he
was handsome and light-hearted. But it could not be hid that he often
came for money, which old Mr. Tresham had sometimes to borrow in St.
Penfer for him. And business men noted the fact that his visits were
so erratic and frequently so long in duration that it was hardly
likely he had regular employment. And if a man had no private steady
income, then for him to be without steady daily labour was considered
in St. Penfer suspicious and not at all respectable. So in general
Roland Tresham was treated with a shy courtesy, which at first he
resented, but finally laughed at.

"Squire Peverall is afraid of his daughter and barely returns my bow,
and the rector has sent his pretty Phyllis to St. Ives while I am
here, Elizabeth," he said one night to his sister. "Phyllis is well
enough, but she has not a shilling, and pray who would marry Clara
Peverall with only a paltry twenty thousand?"

"Clara is a nice girl, Roland, and if you only would marry and settle
down to a reasonable life, how happy I should be."

"Could I lead a more reasonable life, Elizabeth? I manage to get more
pleasure out of a hundred pounds than some men get out of their
thousands."

"And father and I carry the care of it."

"You are very foolish. Why carry care? I do not. I let the men to whom
I owe money carry the care."

"But father cannot do that--nor can I. And to be in debt, in St.
Penfer, is disreputable."

"Well, Elizabeth, is it reasonable that I should suffer for father's
and your inability