d create no
heart-burnings."

"But when I think----"

"If thinking makes you look like that, don't think."

"But I must. I must remember how they scorned and slighted you. It never
seems to have come home to me so vividly as now--now when you seem to
have forgotten it. Oh, Barbara!" He presses back her head and looks long
and tenderly into her eyes. "I was not mistaken, indeed, when I gave you
my heart. Surely you are one among ten thousand."

"Silly boy," says she, with a little tremulous laugh, glad to her very
soul's centre, however, because of his words. "What is there to praise
me for? Have I not warned you that I am purely selfish? What is there I
would not do for very love of you? Come, Freddy," shaking herself loose
from him, and laughing now with honest delight. "Let us be reasonable.
Oh! poor old uncle, it seems hateful to rejoice thus over his death, but
his memory is really only a shadow after all, and I suppose he meant to
make us happy by his gift, eh, Freddy?"

"Yes, how well he remembered during all these years. He could have
formed no other ties."

"None, naturally." Short pause. "There is that black mare of Mike
Donovan's, Freddy, that you so fancied. You can buy it now."

Monkton laughs involuntarily. Something of the child has always lingered
about Barbara.

"And I should like to get a black velvet gown," says she, her face
brightening, "and to buy Joyce a----Oh! but Joyce will be rich herself."

"Yes. I'm really afraid you will be done out of the joy of overloading
Joyce with gifts. She'll be able to give you something. That will be a
change, at all events. As for the velvet gown, if this," touching the
letter, "bears any meaning, I should think you need not confine yourself
to one velvet gown."

"And there's Tommy," says she quickly, her thoughts running so fast that
she scarcely hears him. "You have always said you wanted to put him in
the army. Now you can do it."

"Yes," says Monkton, with sudden interest. "I should like that. But
you--you shrank from the thought, didn't you?"

"Well, he might have to go to India," says she, nervously.

"And what of that?"

"Oh, nothing--that is, nothing really--only there are lions and tigers
there, Freddy; aren't there, now?"

"One or two," says Mr. Monkton, "if we are to believe travelers' tales.
But they are all proverbially false. I don't believe in lions at all
myself. I'm sure they are myths. Well, let him go into the navy, then.
Lions