ast a more favourable eye toward me."

She did not reply, so he continued urging. "If it's because you're stuck
up, it must have been those poor English Rexfords put it into your head,
for you couldn't have had such ideas before you came here. Now, if
that's the barrier between us, I can tell you it needn't stand, for I
could have one of those two pretty young ladies of theirs quick as not.
If I said 'Come, my dear, let's go off by train and get married, and ask
your father's blessing after,' she'd come."

"How dare you tell me such a falsehood!" Eliza rose magnificently.

"Oh," said he, "I meet them occasionally."

She looked at him in utter disdain. She did not believe him; it was only
a ruse to attract her.

"How do you know," she asked fiercely, "what ideas I could have had or
not before I went to the Rexfords?"

"That's a part of what I was going to say next"--she sat down
again--"but I don't _want_ to hurt you, mind. I'd make it real easy for
you if you'd let me cherish you."

"What have you to say?"

"Just this--that it'll all have to come out some time; you know to what
I allude."

She did not look as if she knew.

"Upon my word!" he ejaculated admiringly, "you do beat all."

"Well, what are you talking of?" she asked.

"In this world or the next, all you've done will be made public, you
know," he replied, not without tone of menace. "But what I want to speak
about now is Father Cameron. I've got him here, and I've never regretted
the bread and shelter I give him, for he's a real nice old gentleman;
but I can't help him going to people's houses and putting ideas into
their heads--no more than the wind, I can't keep him. He's crazed, poor
old gentleman, that's what he is."

"You ought never to have brought him here."

"_You'd_ rather he'd been stoned in Quebec streets?" He looked at her
steadily. "It's because they all more than half believe that he got his
ideas when dead, and then came to life again, that he gets into harm. If
it wasn't for that tale against him he'd not have been hurt in Quebec,
and he'd not be believed by the folks here."

"I thought you believed that too."

He gave her a peculiar smile. "If you was to say right out now in public
that you knew he wasn't the man they take him for, but only a poor
maniac who don't know who he is himself, you'd put an end to the most
part of his influence."

"What do I know about it?" she asked scornfully; but, in haste to
divert him from a