n love. "Lottka," he said, "it is impossible that this
can go on. You cannot waste your life in unavailing regrets." He
stopped short--he could not find words that expressed his meaning
without fearing to pain her.

"In regrets," she repeated, looking at him firmly and sorrowfully. "Oh
no! Who is thinking of it? I have already told you that you may be
quite easy about my future. I am provided for. I am not so forsaken as
I appear, provided my courage does not desert me--my courage and my
disgust. And why must every one be married? If I chose I might be so,
and very well too. All possible pains have been taken to make me fall
in love, and I have had a choice of very desirable wooers, rich, young,
and handsome, and some were really willing regularly to marry me in a
regular church, with a regular clergyman in gown and bands. There was
only one hitch."

"What was that?" he eagerly asked.

"It is unnecessary to mention it. But no--I will tell it to you
straight out, that you may never judge me wrongly. Do you know what has
given me a horror of all men except perhaps yourself! I will whisper it
in your ear. It is because I did not know whether the proposed
bridegroom might not have stood too high in the mother's favour before
he concerned himself about the daughter."

She turned away and went hastily to the window.

After a time she again felt his arm around her. "What you must have had
to endure, dear heart!" he faintly whispered.

She nodded slowly and significantly. "More than you would suppose so
young a creature could have survived. About seven years ago, when I
first understood it all, I still thought I could change my lot. I would
not remain another day in the house. I went out to service. I cut off
all my beautiful long hair to prevent any one admiring me, and the
ugliest clothes were good enough for me so only they would restore my
respectability. How little it has availed me thou knowest. Later, when
I was taken up as a vagrant, I was brought back to the house, to _her_
who naturally had a legal right over me. I had to bear it. I was
powerless against the law. But I at once declared that I would destroy
myself if I were not left in peace. And so I have sat nearly a year in
my own room, and as soon as any one came near it I bolted the door. But
still as I was obliged sometimes to breathe the air, people saw me, and
she herself--though I never would speak a word to her--pretended that
she loved me very much, a