scene of their first
meeting. "No, I can't say your kindness showed itself very strongly in
that first interview, but it was there nevertheless, and when Lady
Jane led me back, your real nature asserted itself, as it always does,
and you were kind to me; kind as only you can be."

That was getting very near to the sentimental; dangerously near, he
thought; and he said to himself: "If this does not end quickly I shall
have to escape."

"You are easily satisfied if you call that good," laughingly returned
Mary. "I can be ever so much better than that if I try."

"Let me see you try," said Brandon.

"Why, I'm trying now," answered Mary with a distracting little pout.
"Don't you know genuine out-and-out goodness when you see it? I'm
doing my very best now. Can't you tell?"

"Yes, I think I recognize it; but--but--be bad again."

"No, I won't! I will not be bad even to please you; I have determined
not to be bad and I will not--not even to be good. This," placing her
hand over her heart, "is just full of 'good' to-day," and her lips
parted as she laughed at her own pleasantry.

"I am afraid you had better be bad--I give you fair warning," said
Brandon huskily. He felt her eyes upon him all the time, and his
strength and good resolves were oozing out like wine from an
ill-coppered cask. After a short silence Mary continued, regardless of
the warning:

"But the position is reversed with us; at first I was unkind to you,
and you were kind to me, but now I am kind to you and you are unkind
to me."

"I can come back at you with your own words," responded Brandon. "You
don't know when I am kind to you. I should be kinder to myself, at
least, were I to leave you and take myself to the other side of the
world."

"Oh! that is one thing I wanted to ask you about. Jane tells me you
are going to New Spain?"

She was anxious to know, but asked the question partly to turn the
conversation which was fast becoming perilous. As a girl, she loved
Brandon, and knew it only too well, but she knew also that she was a
princess, standing next to the throne of the greatest kingdom on
earth; in fact, at that time, the heir apparent--Henry having no
children--for the people would not have the Scotch king's imp--and the
possibility of such a thing as a union with Brandon had never entered
her head, however passionate her feelings toward him. She also knew
that speaking a thought vitalizes it and gives it force; so, although
she could