your vanity into a shoemaker's
shop. The happiest man is he who walks in loose shoes."

"If they are his own, and not inherited," quickly.

The padre laughed quietly. He was very fond of this new-found daughter of
his. Her spontaneity, her blooming beauty, her careless observation of
convention, her independence, had captivated him. Sometimes he believed
that he thoroughly understood her, when all at once he would find himself
mentally peering into some dark corner into which the penetrating light of
his usually swift deduction could throw no glimmer. She possessed the sins
of the butterfly and the latent possibilities of a Judith. She was the
most interesting feminine problem he had in his long years encountered.
The mother mildly amused him, for he could discern the character that she
was sedulously striving to batten down beneath inane social usages and
formalities. Some day she would revert to the original type, and then he
would be glad to renew the acquaintance. In rather a shamefaced way (a
sensation he could not quite analyze) he loved the father. The pugilist
will always embarrass the scholar and excite a negligible envy; for
physical perfection is the most envied of all nature's gifts. The padre
was short, thickset, and inclined toward stoutness in the region of the
middle button of his cassock. But he was active enough for all purposes.

"I have had many wicked thoughts lately," resumed Nora, turning her gaze
away from the tennis players. She and the padre were sitting on the lower
steps of the veranda. The others were loitering by the nets.

"The old plaint disturbs you?"

"Yes."

"Can you not cast it out wholly?"

"Hate has many tentacles."

"What produces that condition of mind?" meditatively. "Is it because we
have wronged somebody?"

"Or because somebody has wronged us?"

"Or misjudged us, by us have been misjudged?" softly.

"Good gracious!" exclaimed Nora, springing up.

"What is it?"

"Father is coming up the path!"

"I am glad to see him. But I do not recollect having seen the face of the
man with him."

The lithe eagerness went out of Nora's body instantly. Everything seemed
to grow cold, as if she had become enveloped in one of those fogs that
suddenly blow down menacingly from hidden icebergs. Fortunately the
inquiring eyes of the padre were not directed at her. He was here, not a
dozen yards away, coming toward her, her father's arm in his! After what
had passed he had dared!