n boyish sympathy "It isn't your
fault."

"Of course it isn't," she smiled, wistfully. "And yet I'd rather suffer
with the parents I have than be happy with any others."

"I suppose that's natural," he admitted, doubtfully.

"I wish I knew more about them," she went on, continuing to give light
touches to the work before her, and now and then leaning back to get the
effect. "I never understood why my father was in prison in Canada."

"Perhaps it was when he killed the man," Ford suggested.

"No; that was in Virginia--at least, the first one. His people didn't like
it. That was the reason for his leaving home. He hated a settled life; and
so he wandered away into the northwest of Canada. It was in the days when
they first began to build the railways there--when there were almost no
people except the trappers and the voyageurs. I was born on the very
shores of Hudson Bay."

"But you didn't stay there?"

"No. I was only a very little child--not old enough to remember--when my
father sent me down to Quebec, to the Ursuline nuns. He never saw me
again. I lived with them till four years ago. I'm eighteen now."

"Why didn't he send you to his people? Hadn't he sisters?--or anything
like that."

"He tried to, but they wouldn't have anything to do with me."

It was clearly a relief to her to talk about herself. He guessed that she
rarely had an opportunity of opening her heart to any one. Not till this
morning had he seen her in the full light of day; and, though but an
immature judge, he fancied her features had settled themselves into lines
of reserve and pride from which in happier circumstances they might have
been free. Her way of twisting her dark hair--which waved over the brows
from a central parting--into the simplest kind of knot gave her an air of
sedateness beyond her years. But what he noticed in her particularly was
her eyes--not so much because they were wild, dark eyes, with the peculiar
fleeing expression of startled forest things, as because of the pleading,
apologetic look that comes into the eyes of forest things when they stand
at bay. It was when--for seconds only--the pupils shone with a jet-like
blaze that he caught what he called the non-Aryan effect; but that glow
died out quickly, leaving something of the fugitive appeal which Hawthorne
saw in the eyes of Beatrice Cenci.

"He offered his sisters a great deal of money," she sighed, "but they
wouldn't take me."

"Oh? So he had money?"

"H