d have him more like James De Vere.

"Will you answer me?" J.C. said, after there had been a moment's
silence, and in his deep black eyes there was a truthful, earnest
look wholly unlike the wicked, treacherous expression usually hidden
there.

"Wait a while," answered Maude, coming to his side and laying her
hand upon his shoulder. "Wait a few days, and I most know I shall
tell you Yes. I like you, Mr. De Vere, and if I hesitate it is
because--because--I really don't know what, but something keeps
telling me that our engagement may be broken, and if so, it had
better not be made."

There was another storm of words, and then, as Maude still seemed
firm in her resolution to do nothing hastily, J.C. took his leave.
As the door closed after him, Louis heaved a deep sigh of relief,
and, turning to his sister, said: "I never heard anything like it; I
wonder if James would act like that!"

"Louis," said Maude, but ere Louis could reply she had changed her
mind, and determined not to tell him that James De Vere alone stood
between her and the decision J.C. pleaded for so earnestly. So she
said: "Shall I marry J.C. De Vere?"

"Certainly, if you love him," answered Louis. "He will take you to
Rochester away from this lonesome house. I shall live with you more
than half the time, and--"

Here Louis was interrupted by the sound of wheels. Mrs. Kelsey and
Nellie had returned from the Lake, and bidding her brother say
nothing of what he had heard, Maude went down to meet them. Nellie
was in the worst of humors. "Her head was aching horridly--she had
spent an awful day--and J.C. was wise in staying at home."

"How is he?" she asked, "though of course you have not seen him."

Maude was about to speak when Hannah, delighted with a chance to
disturb Nellie, answered for her. "It's my opinion that headache was
all a sham, for you hadn't been gone an hour, afore he was over here
in the garden with Maude, where he stayed ever so long. Then he came
agen this afternoon, and hasn't but jest gone."

Nellie had not sufficient discernment to read the truth of this
assertion in Maude's crimson cheeks, but Mrs. Kelsey had, and very
sarcastically she said: "Miss Remington, I think, might be better
employed than in trying to supplant her sister."

"I have not tried to supplant her, madam," answered Maude, her look
of embarrassment giving way to one of indignation at the unjust
accusation.

"May I ask, then, if Mr. De Vere has visited