t the success of the hotel had
been mainly due. Possibly, the satisfaction of Buckeye Hill was due to
something else. Slowly and insensibly Miss Trotter had achieved a social
distinction; the wives and daughters of the banker, the lawyer, and the
pastor had made much of her, and now, as an independent woman of means,
she stood first in the district. Guests deemed it an honor to have a
personal interview with her. The governor of the State and the Supreme
Court judges treated her like a private hostess; middle-aged Miss
Trotter was considered as eligible a match as the proudest heiress
in California. The old romantic fiction of her past was revived
again,--they had known she was a "real lady" from the first! She
received these attentions, as became her sane intellect and cool
temperament, without pride, affectation, or hesitation. Only her dark
eyes brightened on the day when Mr. Bilson's marriage was made known,
and she was called upon by James Calton.

"I did you a great injustice," he said, with a smile.

"I don't understand you," she replied a little coldly.

"Why, this woman and her marriage," he said; "you must have known
something of it all the time, and perhaps helped it along to save
Chris."

"You are mistaken," returned Miss Trotter truthfully. "I knew nothing of
Mr. Bilson's intentions."

"Then I have wronged you still more," he said briskly, "for I thought at
first that you were inclined to help Chris in his foolishness. Now I see
it was your persuasions that changed him."

"Let me tell you once for all, Mr. Calton," she returned with an
impulsive heat which she regretted, "that I did not interfere in any way
with your brother's suit. He spoke to me of it, and I promised to see
Frida, but he afterwards asked me not to. I know nothing of the matter."

"Well," laughed Mr. Calton, "WHATEVER you did, it was most efficacious,
and you did it so graciously and tactfully that it has not altered
his high opinion of you, if, indeed, he hasn't really transferred his
affections to you."

Luckily Miss Trotter had her face turned from him at the beginning of
the sentence, or he would have noticed the quick flush that suddenly
came to her cheek and eyes. Yet for an instant this calm, collected
woman trembled, not at what Mr. Calton might have noticed, but at what
SHE had noticed in HERSELF. Mr. Calton, construing her silence and
averted head into some resentment of his familiar speech, continued
hurriedly:--

"I