uch human contradictions; but, as you say, I take things
seriously--everything--life itself."

He paused, and there was a slight trembling of the lip.

"Besides," he went on in another tone, "it has been always so. Since our
childhood--my brother's and mine--there has not been much paternal
tenderness wasted on me. I can hardly expect it now."

"Surely that must be a morbid fancy," Greta said in a distressed tone.
The light was dying out of her eyes. She made one quick glance downward
to where Hugh Ritson's infirm foot trailed on the road, and then, in an
instant of recovered consciousness, she glanced up, now confused and
embarrassed, into his face.

She was too late; he had read her thought. A faint smile parted her
lips; and the light of his own eyes was cold.

"No; not that," he said; "I ask no pity in that regard--and need none.
Nature has given my brother a physique that would shame a Greek statue,
but he and I are quits--perhaps more than quits."

He made a hard smile, and she flushed deep with shame of having her
thought read.

"I am sorry if I conveyed that," she said, slowly. "It must have been
quite unwittingly. I was thinking of your mother. She is so good and
tender to everybody. Why, she is the angel of the country-side. Do you
know what name they've given her?"

Hugh shook his head.

"Saint Grace! Parson Christian told me--it seems it was my own dear
mother who christened her."

"Nevertheless, there has not been much to sweeten my life, Greta," he
said.

His voice arrested her; it was charged with unusual feeling. She made no
answer, and they began to walk toward the house.

After a few steps Greta remembered the trick that she had played on
Paul, and craned her beautiful neck to see over the stone cobble-hedge
into the field where she had left him.

Hugh observed her intently.

"I hear that you have decided. Is it so, Greta?" he said.

"Decided what?" she asked, coloring again.

He also colored slightly, and answered with a strained quietness.

"To marry my brother."

"If he wishes it--I suppose he does--he says so, you know."

Hugh looked earnestly into the girl's glowing face, and said with
deliberation:

"Greta, perhaps there are reasons why you should not marry Paul."

"What reasons?"

He did not reply at once, and she repeated her question. Then he said in
a strange tone:

"Just and lawful impediments, as they say."

Greta's eyes opened wide in undisguised amazement.