scorn--and to know that, try as I will, my
voice, my eyes will grow tender as they rest on him, as I speak to him!
To have to hide, to conceal, to crush down my heart while it is aching,
throbbing with the torture of my love for him!"

He strode from her, then came back. The sight of the storm within her
had moved him: for, after all, this strange girl was his daughter,
flesh of his flesh, bone of his bone. He swore under his breath and
struggled for speech.

"And--and the man Stafford?" he said. "He--he has not said--D--n it!
you don't mean to tell me that he is absolutely indifferent, that
he--he doesn't care?"

"I'll tell you the truth," she said. "I swore to myself that I would.
There is too much at stake for me to conceal anything. He
does--not--care for me."

Ralph Falconer uttered a sharp snarl of shame and resentment.

"He doesn't? and yet you--you want to marry him!"

She made a gesture with her hands which was more eloquent than words.

"Perhaps--perhaps there is someone else? Someone of the other women
here?" he suggested, moodily.

"Yes, there is someone else," she said, with the same calm decision.
"No, it is not one of the women here; it is a girl in the place; a
farmer's daughter, I think. It is only a _liaison_, a vulgar
intrigue--"

He uttered an exclamation.

"And yet _that_ doesn't cure you!"

She shook her head and smiled.

"No; my case is incurable. Father, if he were engaged to anyone of the
women here, to someone his equal, I should still love him and want him;
yes, and move heaven and earth to get him. But this is only a
flirtation with some country girl--she meets him on the hill-side by
the river--anywhere. I have seen them, at a distance, once or twice.
She is of no importance. She has caught his fancy, and will soon fail
to hold it."

She waved her hand as if she were moving the obstacle aside. Her father
stared at her in a kind of stupefaction.

"My girl, don't you know what you are asking for? A life of
wretchedness and misery; the hell of being married to a man who doesn't
love you."

She laughed and drew herself up, her eyes flashing, a warm glow on her
cheeks.

"Who doesn't love me! Not now, perhaps; but do you think I should not
teach him to love me, make him love me? Look at me, father!"

He looked at her reluctantly, in a kind of dazed admiration and
resentment.

"Do you think any man could resist me if I set my mind upon winning
him? No! Oh, it's not the la