taken of themselves, and one was
taken with her hair down and her side face turned. And Mrs. Glass has
been up here this afternoon, saying that her gentlemen friends say I
must be taken in the same way. She was fixing me for it. Look, I'll show
you how it is."

Her great masses of hair, left loose apparently from this last visit,
were thrown down her back in a moment, and Eliza, looking-glass in hand,
sat herself sideways on a chair, and disposed her hair so that it hung
with shining copper glow like a curtain behind her pale profile. "What
do I look like, Miss Sophia?"

"Like what you are, Eliza--a handsome girl."

"Then why shouldn't I marry a rich man? It would be easier than drudging
here, and yet I thought it was grand to be here last year. It's easy
enough to get up in the world."

"Yes, when anyone has the right qualities for it."

"I have the right qualities."

"Unscrupulousness?" interrogated Sophia; and then she charged the girl
with the falsehood of her name.

Eliza put down her looking-glass and rolled up her hair. There was
something almost leonine in her attitude, in her silence, as she
fastened the red masses. Sophia felt the influence of strong feeling
upon her; she almost felt fear. Then Eliza came and stood in front of
her.

"Is he _very_ ill, do you think, Miss Sophia?"

"Not dangerously." Sophia had no doubt as to who was meant. "If he would
only take reasonable care he'd be pretty well."

"But he won't," she cried. "On the clearin', when he used to take cold,
he'd do all the wrong things. He'll just go and kill himself doing like
that now, when he goes back there alone--and winter coming on."

"Do you think you could persuade him not to go?"

"He's just that sort of a man he'd never be happy anywhere else. He
hones for the place. No, he'll go back and kill himself. I'm sorry, but
it can't be helped. I'm _not_ sorry I came away from him; I'm not sorry
I changed my name, and did all the things I s'pose he's told you I did,
and that I s'pose you think are so wicked. I'd do it again if I was as
frightened and as angry. Was he to make me his slave-wife? _That's_ what
he wanted of me! I know the man!"--scornfully--"he said it was for my
good, but it was his own way he wanted." All the forced quiescence of
her manner had changed to fire. "And if you think that I'm unnatural,
and wicked to pretend I had a different name, and to do what I did to
get quit of him, then I'll go among people who