tself in a kind
of social defiance that would always keep her from being just--oh, well,
you know---"

"She's bright enough, mother, she's quick enough, and she's pretty
enough, isn't she?"

"She would be, Jonathan, if her defiance did not come from pure
wilfulness. But she says and does the most unconventional things simply
for the pleasure of shocking people. It isn't that she doesn't know,
it's that she doesn't care."

"But she'll get to care--all women do, if you give them time." His tone
implied that the whole sex was comprised in an elementary branch of
psychology which he had mastered with the help of a few simple rules of
analogy.

"Well, she may, dear, but I doubt it. She is as absolutely without class
instinct as an anarchist, I believe. When she lived in the overseer's
cottage she never looked up and now that she has come out of it, she
never looks down. We've told her repeatedly that she mustn't talk to
strangers about that part of her life, but it isn't the least bit of
use. Only a few days ago I heard her telling Judge Grayson that nobody
appeared to do any 'courting' in New York."

To her amazement he burst into a laugh.

"By Jove, I suppose she misses it," he returned, "but what about that
fellow she picked up in the North who hung around her last summer?"

"Oh, there have been plenty of them hanging about her. Molly is the
kind, you know, that will have lovers wherever you put her." There was
a faint condescension in her voice, for she herself preferred adorers to
lovers.

"But she hasn't seemed to care about them," he said. "I believe she has
grown tired of flirting."

"I'm sure she doesn't flirt with them, and I think it's all because she
is pining for somebody she left at Old Church--the miller or the rector
or somebody we've never even heard of."

"What's that?" he started a little, and she saw at once that, although
she had used her most delicate weapon, he had flinched from the first
touch of the blade. "I'm positive she hadn't a real fancy for anybody
down there," he added, as he relapsed into his attitude of indifference.

"I know she says so, Jonathan, but there are other ways of telling."

"Oh, there's no truth in that--it's all nonsense," he said irritably.

Then a door creaked in the hall, there was a rustle of silken skirts
on the carpet, and Molly, having dried her tears, came in, pliant,
blushing, and eager to please them both.

CHAPTER VI

IN WHICH HEARTS GO AST