human, innocently daring, utterly ignorant of
convention. She's only a child now, but another year or two will bring
something else to her."

"Don't you suppose I've thought of that?" he said, frowning.

"I hope you have."

"Well, I have. When I find enough to do to keep soul and body
friendly I'm going to send her to school, if that old ruffian, her
father, allows it."

"I think he will," I said, gravely; "but after that?"

"After what?"

"After she's educated and--unhappy?"

"She isn't any too happy now," he retorted.

"Granted. But after you have spent all your money on her, what
then?"

"What do you mean?"

"I mean that you'll have no child to deal with, but a woman in full
bloom, a woman fairly aquiver with life and intelligence, a
high-strung, sensitive, fine-grained creature, whose educated
ignorance will not be educated innocence, remember that! And I tell
you, Speed, it's the heaviest responsibility a man can assume."

"I know it," he replied.

"Then it's all right, if you do know it," I said, cheerfully. "All I
can say is, I am thankful she isn't to spend her life in the circus."

"Or meet death there," he added. "It's not to our credit that she
escapes it."

Jacqueline came dancing back to the porch, cat under one arm, book
under the other, so frankly happy, so charmingly grateful for Speed's
society, that the tragedy of the lonely child touched me very deeply.
I strove to discover any trace of the bar sinister in her, but could
not, though now I understood, from her parentage, how it was possible
for a poacher's child to have such finely sculptured hands and feet.
Perhaps her dark, silky lashes and hair were Mornac's, but if this was
so, I trusted that there the aristocratic blood had spent its force in
the frail body of this child of chance.

I went into the house, leaving them seated on the porch, heads
together, while in a low monotone Speed read the deathless "Morte
d'Arthur."

Daylight was waning.

Out of the west a clear, greenish sky, tinged with saffron tints,
promised a sea-wind. But the mild land-breeze was still blowing and
the ebb-tide flowing as I entered the corridor and glanced at the
corner where the spinning-wheel stood. Sylvia sat beside it, reading
in the Lutheran Bible by the failing light.

She raised her dreamy eyes as I passed; I had never seen her piquantly
expressive face so grave.

"May I speak to you alone a moment, after dinner?" I asked.

"If you wish