u so cold and
distant, as if you were taking your affection away?"

"I was--I was--Heaven forgive me! I was learning to live without you; to
go back to a life more solitary than it was before you came. And,
Cynthia, you were not altogether a welcome guest. I did not know what to
do with a little girl. I was set in my ways. I did not like to be
disturbed. I could have sent a boy off to school. And Elizabeth thought
it a trouble, too. You must read your father's letter and see the trust
he reposed in me. But you were such a strange, shy little thing, and so
delicate in all your ways. You never touched an article without
permission, you handled books so gently, you never made dog's-ears, or
crumpled a page. And that winter you were ill--and the faith you had in
his return. How many times my heart ached for you. After that I could
not have given you up, and I fell into a sort of belief that it would go
on this always. When the lovers began to come, I found I must awake from
my delusion. And then I knew that an oldish fellow could love a sweet
girl in her first bloom, but that it would be a selfish, unpardonable
thing."

"Not if she loved him!" She raised her face in all its sweet bravery of
color.

"But it was his duty to let her see what pleasure there was in the world
for youth; it was the promise to her dead father, who had confided his
treasure to him. And even now he hesitates, lest you shall not have the
best of everything."

"I shall have the best;" with winning confidence.

"I loved your mother. I was a young lad, and she some five years older.
I suppose I was like a young brother to her, because your father, her
lover, had been here so much. And somehow, you slipped into the place
where there never had been any other."

"It must have been kept for me," she said gravely. "And now I give you
warning that I shall never go out of it. No place could ever be so dear
as this house with all its memories. I am glad you knew and loved my
mother."

It came noon before they were talked out, or before they had settled
only one point, about which she would have her way. She wrote a pretty
note to Mr. Saltonstall, reiterating some things she had said the
evening before, and acknowledging that when she had tried to accept him,
she had found her heart was another's, "and you are worthy of a woman's
best love," she added, which did comfort him.

Still it puzzled him a good deal, but he finally settled upon Anthony
and tho