y young. It is annoying to be cut off in
the midst of an adventure, by the hero of the adventure, when you have
flattered yourself that the poor fellow was yearning to know you. If
Angela was unjust to Hilliard she was not an isolated instance; for all
women are unjust to all men, especially to those in whom they are
beginning to take an interest. Angela did not know that she was interested
in Nickson Hilliard, and would have laughed if any one had suggested the
idea, from a personal point of view; but in her social reign as the
Princess di Sereno, she had been a good deal spoiled--by every one except
the Prince. Vaguely, and like a petted child, she had taken it for granted
that all men were glad to be "nice" to her, and she thought the "forest
creature" was showing himself a backwoods creature--rude and
unenlightened.

Angela loved the sea, and chose to travel on it whenever she could. The
trip from New York to New Orleans was even more interesting than she had
expected from tales of her father's, for the ship steamed along the coast,
in blue and golden weather, turning into the Gulf of Mexico after rounding
the long point of Florida. Cutting the silk woof of azure, day by day, a
great longing to be happy knocked at Angela's heart, like something
unjustly imprisoned, demanding to be let out. She had never felt it so
strongly before. It must be, she thought, the tonic of the air, which made
her conscious of youth and life, eager to have things happen, and be in
the midst of them. But Kate was a comfort, almost a friend. And Timmy the
cat was a priceless treasure.

No town in America, perhaps, could have contrasted more sharply with New
York than New Orleans. Angela felt this, even as the ship moved slowly
along the great canal and slipped into the dark, turbid gold of the
Mississippi River. The drowsy landscape on either side was Southern
landscape, and among live-oaks draped with mourning flags of moss, and
magnolia-trees gemmed with buds, there were planters' houses which seemed
all roof and balcony. Buzzards flew up suddenly, out of rice-fields, as
the ship rounded a curve--creatures big and long-legged as the storks of
Holland and Algeria. The wharf, when the ship docked at last, was filled
with bales of cotton, and it was as if all the negroes in America must
have come down to meet the boat. She might have been walking into an old
story of Cable's, in the days "befoh the wah."

Her idea had been to travel on to