pths of isolation; and though she felt
no particular affection for him, and not the slightest gratitude, she
pitied him because she was conscious that he was superior to the people
about him, and that she was the only being between him and solitude.
Therefore, when Miss Hatchard sent for her a day or two later, to talk
of a school at Nettleton, and to say that this time a friend of hers
would "make the necessary arrangements," Charity cut her short with the
announcement that she had decided not to leave North Dormer.

Miss Hatchard reasoned with her kindly, but to no purpose; she simply
repeated: "I guess Mr. Royall's too lonesome."

Miss Hatchard blinked perplexedly behind her eye-glasses. Her long frail
face was full of puzzled wrinkles, and she leant forward, resting her
hands on the arms of her mahogany armchair, with the evident desire to
say something that ought to be said.

"The feeling does you credit, my dear."

She looked about the pale walls of her sitting-room, seeking counsel of
ancestral daguerreotypes and didactic samplers; but they seemed to make
utterance more difficult.

"The fact is, it's not only--not only because of the advantages. There
are other reasons. You're too young to understand----"

"Oh, no, I ain't," said Charity harshly; and Miss Hatchard blushed to
the roots of her blonde cap. But she must have felt a vague relief at
having her explanation cut short, for she concluded, again invoking the
daguerreotypes: "Of course I shall always do what I can for you; and in
case... in case... you know you can always come to me...."

Lawyer Royall was waiting for Charity in the porch when she returned
from this visit. He had shaved, and brushed his black coat, and looked a
magnificent monument of a man; at such moments she really admired him.

"Well," he said, "is it settled?"

"Yes, it's settled. I ain't going."

"Not to the Nettleton school?"

"Not anywhere."

He cleared his throat and asked sternly: "Why?"

"I'd rather not," she said, swinging past him on her way to her room.
It was the following week that he brought her up the Crimson Rambler and
its fan from Hepburn. He had never given her anything before.

The next outstanding incident of her life had happened two years later,
when she was seventeen. Lawyer Royall, who hated to go to Nettleton,
had been called there in connection with a case. He still exercised
his profession, though litigation languished in North Dormer and its
o