iercely and waited to let that sentiment fructify in
the young man's soul.

"Indeed, I--I hope so," ventured Ellesworth.

Disregarding this as a feeble attempt at apology, she asked,--

"What is your name, sir? Do you come from _him_? Or are you _he_?"

The contempt which she cast into the personal pronouns had a marked
effect upon Ellesworth. The mere fact that a woman, for whom at first
sight he felt a greater admiration than he had ever bestowed elsewhere,
should be so antagonistic to him at the start, made his heart contract
within him. Yet he managed to pull himself together and say, with
admirable feint,--

"Excuse me. You must labor under a mistake. I am a total stranger here.
I am--eh--merely looking about. I am staying at Sunshine, for my
health."

He noted with satisfaction a look of relief stealing over her face, and
a slight touch of spontaneous sympathy, too, at his last statement.
Ellesworth immediately followed the lead up.

"Yes," he said, "I am an invalid, and was ordered South for my lungs. I
have heard so much about Southern hospitality, would it be asking too
much for me to rest here awhile? I am a trifle tired after this long
ride."

He heaved a sigh and tried to look utterly fagged out as he noticed how
admirably that tack succeeded.

"Oh, I beg your pardon, sir," said the girl impulsively. "I thought you
were a lawyer or a sheriff, or perhaps a man from--_Boston_." She could
hardly pronounce the name of the cultured city. It stuck in her throat.

"I?" he asked in a tone of reproach. "Not at all," he answered,
laughing. "I told you that I have come from Sunshine," he added,
blandly.

The girl, taking his negative as a reply to all her doubts, now opened
the gate hospitably.

"Forgive my rudeness, sir, and come in and sit awhile," she said, as
prettily as a woman could. "I'll ask Aunt McCorkle to get
you--something. Would you take a glass of milk?"

She blushed as she remembered her empty wine cellar. With a
well-feigned, languid air, which he could hardly maintain, so
boisterously the blood surged through his veins, Ellesworth walked up to
the piazza and sat down.

He looked about him in a bewildered way. The passionless white camellia
blooming by his side seemed singularly out of place. He thought of the
intoxicating Jacqueminot roses he used to order at Halvin's for that
chilly Boston girl he tried to love and couldn't. The red camellia had
more of this splendid Southern creatu