eception by the governors of
the land), a man young, stalwart, handsome, with an aristocratic
lineage that bred him a native gentleman, with a grand old title
that had come down to him through six hundred years of honor in
warfare and high places of his people. That this man should be
despised by her relatives and family connections because of his
warm, red skin and Indian blood, never occurred to Lydia. Her angel
sister had loved the youth, the old Scotch missionary little short
of adored him. Why, then, this shocked amazement of her relatives,
that she should wish to wed the finest gentleman she had ever met,
the man whose love and kindness had made her erstwhile blackened
and cruel world a paradise of sunshine and contentment? She was
but little prepared for the storm of indignation that met her
announcement that she was engaged to marry a Mohawk Indian chief.

Her sister, with whom she never had anything in common, who was
years older, and had been married in England when Lydia was but
three years of age, implored, entreated, sneered, ridiculed and
stormed. Lydia sat motionless through it all, and then the outraged
sister struck a vital spot with: "I don't know what Elizabeth has
been thinking of all these years, to let you associate with Indians
on an equality. _She_ is to blame for this."

Then and only then, did Lydia blaze forth. "Don't you _dare_ speak
of 'Liza like that!" flung the girl. "She was the only human being
in our whole family, the only one who ever took me in her arms, who
ever called me 'dear,' who ever kissed me as if she meant it. I
tell you, she loved George Mansion better than she loved her cold,
chilly English brothers. She loved _me_, and her house was my home,
which yours never was. Yes, she loved me, angel girl that she was,
and she died in a halo of happiness because I was happy and
because I was to marry the noblest, kingliest gentleman I ever
met." The girl ceased, breathless.

"Yes," sneered her sister, "yes, marry an _Indian_!"

"Yes," defied Lydia, "an _Indian_, who can give me not only a
better home than this threadbare parsonage of yours"--here she
swept scornful eyes about the meagre little, shabby room--"yes, a
home that any Bestman would be proud to own; but better than that,"
she continued ragingly, "he has given me love--_love_, that you in
your chilly, inhuman home sneer at, but that I have cried out for;
love that my dead mother prayed should come to me, from the moment