rival, or
Miss Sally was actually deceiving them both, his position had become
intolerable.

"I must remind you, Champney," he said, with freezing deliberation,
"that Miss Miranda Dows and her niece now represent the Drummond Company
equally with myself, and that you cannot expect me to listen to any
reflections upon the way they choose to administer their part in its
affairs, either now, or to come. Still less do I care to discuss the
idle gossip which can affect only the PRIVATE interests of these ladies,
with which neither you nor I have any right to interfere."

But the naivete of the young Englishman was as invincible as Miss
Sally's own, and as fatal to Courtland's attitude. "Of course I haven't
any RIGHT, you know," he said, calmly ignoring the severe preamble of
his companion's speech, "but I say! hang it all! even if a fellow has
no chance HIMSELF, he don't like to see a girl throw herself and her
property away on a man like that."

"One moment, Champney," said Courtland, under the infection of his
guest's simplicity, abandoning his former superior attitude. "You say
you have no chance. Do you want me to understand that you are regularly
a suitor of Miss Dows?"

"Y-e-e-s," said the young fellow, but with the hesitation of
conscientiousness rather than evasion. "That is--you know I WAS. But
don't you see, it couldn't be. It wouldn't do, you know. If those
clannish neighbors of hers--that Southern set--suspected that Miss
Sally was courted by an Englishman, don't you know--a poacher on their
preserves--it would be all up with her position on the property and her
influence over them. I don't mind telling you that's one reason why I
left the company and took that other plantation. But even that didn't
work; they had their suspicions excited already."

"Did Miss Dows give that as a reason for declining your suit?" asked
Courtland slowly.

"Yes. You know what a straightforward girl she is. She didn't come no
rot about 'not expecting anything of the kind,' or about 'being a sister
to me,' and all that, for, by Jove! she's always more like a fellow's
sister, don't you know, than his girl. Of course, it was hard lines for
me, but I suppose she was about right." He stopped, and then added with
a kind of gentle persistency: "YOU think she was about right, don't
you?"

With what was passing in Courtland's mind the question seemed so
bitterly ironical that at first he leaned half angrily forward, in an
unconscious