he would go where he
led, and never once raise her eyes to look for the horizon. As she said
to herself quite seriously, though with a want of reverence that augured
ill; "I will go down on my knees and help him, though he turn Bonze and
burn incense to Buddha in my very studio!" His presence always soothed
her. His gayety and affection never failed to revive her spirits and
confidence.

"Wasn't it a good sermon?" said he to Catherine as he came in, with his
boyish laugh of triumph. "Give me a little praise! I never got a word of
encouragement from you in my life."

"I should as soon think of encouraging a whole herd of Texas cattle,"
answered Catherine. "What good can my praise do you?"

"You child of nature, don't you know that children of nature like you
always grow wild and need no cultivation, but that we artificial flowers
can't live without it?"

"I don't know how to cultivate," answered Catherine; "it is Esther you
are thinking about."

Having announced this self-evident fact, Catherine walked off and left
him to quiet Esther's alarms as he could. As she went she heard him turn
to Esther and repeat his prayer that she should be gentle with him and
give his sermon a word of praise.

"How can I stop to think whether it is good or not," said Esther, "when
I hear you telling all our secrets to our whole visiting list? I could
think of nothing but myself, and how I could get away."

"And whose secrets can I tell if not our own?" asked Hazard triumphant.

While he was with her Esther was peaceful and happy, but no sooner had
he gone than her terrors began again.

"He will find me out, Catherine, and it will break my heart," she said.
"I never knew I had a jealous temper. I am horribly narrow-minded. I'm
not fit for him, and I knew it when he asked me. He will hate me when he
finds what a wife he has got."

Catherine, who positively declined to recognize Mr. Hazard's superiority
of mind over Esther, took this with unshaken fortitude. "If you can
stand it, I guess he can," she remarked curtly. "Where do you expect the
poor man to get a wife, if all of us say we are not fit for him?"

This view of the case amused Esther for a time, but not for long--the
matter was too serious for any treatment but a joke, and joking made it
more serious still. Try which way she would there was no escape from her
anxiety. Hazard, who had foreseen some trouble from her old associations
with loose religious opinion, had taken i