sort are all very well, but a man doesn't want to marry
one of them. I want my wife to have such dignity and modesty that I
can feel sure no other man ever has, or ever will, kiss her but me.
And I can feel sure of that with Marguerite--just as sure as I can
that I'll have a favorable answer from her by the time I make my next
visit to Las Plumas."

Marguerite sat behind her screen of honeysuckle vines, her face in her
hands and a mob of blind, wild, incoherent desires and doubts making
tumult in her heart, until she heard her father's footsteps in the
house. Pierre Delarue had been taking his Sunday afternoon siesta, and
he came out upon the veranda in a very comfortable frame of mind. He
patted Marguerite's shoulder affectionately and asked her to make him
a cup of tea. He was very fond of his fair young daughter, who had
grown into the living likeness of the wife he had married in the days
of his exuberant youth. But he rarely withdrew his thoughts from
outside affairs long enough to be conscious of his affection, except
on Sunday afternoons, when interest and excitement on Main street were
at too low an ebb to attract his presence. On other days, she endeared
herself to him by the sympathetic attention she gave to his accounts
of what was going on down-town and to his rehearsals of the speeches
he had made. On Sundays, when he had the leisure to feel a quickened
sense of responsibility, he both pleased himself and felt that he was
discharging a duty to her by discoursing upon his observations and
experiences of the world and by propounding his theories of life and
conduct. For Pierre prided himself on his philosophy quite as much as
he did on his oratory.

Marguerite, on her part, was very fond of her father, but it was a
fondness which considered his love of speech-making and his flighty
enthusiasms with smiling tolerance. Her cooler and more critical way
of looking at things had caused her, young as she was, to distrust his
judgment in practical affairs, and about most matters she had long
since ceased asking his advice.

She sat beside him and talked with him while he drank his cup of tea.
A recently married young couple passed the house, and Marguerite made
some disapproving comment on the man's character, adding that she did
not understand how so nice a girl could have married him.

"Oh, he has a smooth and ready tongue," answered her father, "and I
dare say it was easy for him to make love. When you are o