dly and indecently ridiculous. "Why, but it's impossible!"
she protested, and began helplessly to laugh.

"Well, I'd like to know why?" Ella snapped. "I'm sure papa is twice as
rich as old Britton was, and twice as easy." She went off into sobs
behind her handkerchief.

"Oh, don't, Ella, don't cry!" Flora begged, petting the large expanse of
heaving shoulders. "I didn't mean anything. I was just silly. Of course
it may be that she wants to marry him. But she never has before--at
least, I mean, I don't believe she wants to now. What makes you think
she does? What has she done?"

"Well," Ella burst out, "why is she coming here all the time, when she
never used to, and petting papa? Why does she bother to be so agreeable
to me when she never was before? Why does she make me ask her to
dinner, when I don't want to?"

Each question knocked on Flora's brain to the accompaniment of Ella's
furious rocking. She could not answer them, and Ella's explanation,
absurd as it seemed, coming on top of her high expectations, wasn't
impossible. It was like Clara to have more than one iron in the fire;
but when Flora remembered the passionate intentness with which Clara had
demolished the order of her room, she couldn't believe that Clara would
pause in the midst of such pursuit to pounce on Judge Buller.

"Oh, Ella," Flora sympathetically urged, "I don't believe there's really
any danger. And surely, even if she meant it, Judge Buller wouldn't
be--"

"Oh, yes, he would," Ella cut her short. "Why, when she came yesterday
he was just going out, and she went for him and made him stop to tea.
Think of it--papa stopping to tea! And he was as pleased as Punch to
have her make up to him. He hasn't the least idea of what she's after.
Papa isn't used to ladies. He's always just lived with me."

This astonishing statement looking at Flora through Ella's unsuspecting
eyes had nevertheless a pathos of its own. It conjured up a long vista
of harmonious existence which the two, the daughter and the father, had
made out of their mutual simplicity, and their mutual gusto for the
material comforts which came comfortably.

"But I'll tell you one thing," Ella ended, still rocking vigorously; "if
she comes here to-night to dinner when she knows I don't want her I
shall tell her what I think of her, before she leaves this house! See if
I don't."

"Don't do that, Ella," Flora entreated, "that would be awful." She was
certain that such an interview