whether he ought to have. Surely his
unfailing helpfulness and sympathy gave him the right, in fee-simple, to
anything and everything he might happen to covet. That he should covet
what was wrong, what was selfish, detrimental to others, seemed
incredible. And the generous pity of her youthful tenderness, her
impatience of all privation, all disappointment or denial for those she
held in affection, overflowed in her. She longed to do whatever would
greatly please him, to procure for him whatever he wanted. Wouldn't it be
delicious to do that--if she could only find out!

But this last brought her up against a disquieting lesson lately
learned.--Namely, against recognition of how very far the lives of
men--even those we know most dearly and closely--and the lives of us
women are really apart. She thought of her father and Darcy Faircloth and
their entirely unsuspected relation. This dulled the edge of her
enthusiasm. For wasn't it only too probably the same with them all?
Loyalty compelled the question. Had not every man a secret, or secrets,
only penetrable, both for his peace of mind and for your own, at
considerable risk?

Damaris planted her elbows on the window-sill, her chin in the hollow of
her hands. Her eyes were solemn, her face grave with thought.--Verily the
increase of knowledge is the increase of perplexity, if not of actual
sorrow. Even the apparently safest and straightest paths are beset with
"pitfall and with gin" for whoso studies to pursue truth and refuse
subscription to illusion. Your charity should be wide as the world
towards others. Towards yourself narrow as a hair, lest you condone your
own weakness, greed, or error. Of temptation to any save very venial sins
Damaris had, in her own person, little conception as yet.--Still to a
maiden of eighteen, though she may have a generous proportion of health
and beauty, sufficient fortune and by no means contemptible intelligence,
noble instincts, complications and distresses, both of the practical and
theoretic order, may, and do, at times occur. Damaris suffered the shock
of such now; and into what further jungles of cheerless speculation she
might have been projected it is impossible to say, had not persons and
events close at hand claimed her attention.

The Grand Hotel at St. Augustin is situated upon a long narrow
promontory, which juts out into the sea at right angles to the main trend
of the coast-line. It faces east, turning its back upon the