en she felt that she liked him as she refused
him, she felt also that it was for this reason that she liked him.
On the day of Graham's accident she had thought nothing of him,--had
hardly spoken to him. But now she loved him--with a sort of love,
because he had been so good to Graham. Though in her heart she knew
all this, she asked herself no questions till her father had spoken
to her of her future happiness.

Then, as she wandered about the house alone,--for she still went on
wandering,--she did ask herself a question or two. What was it that
had changed her thus, and made her gay quick step so slow? what had
altered the happy silver tone of her voice? what had created that
load within her which seemed to weigh her down during every hour of
the day? She knew that there had been a change; that she was not as
she had been; and now she asked herself the question. Not on the
first asking nor on the second did the answer come; not perhaps on
the twentieth. But the answer did come at last, and she told herself
that her heart was no longer her own. She knew and acknowledged to
herself that Felix Graham was its master and owner.

And then came the second question. Under those circumstances what had
she better do? Her mother had told her,--and the words had fallen
deep into her ears,--that it would be a great misfortune if she loved
any man before she had reason to know that that man loved her. She
had no such knowledge as regarded Felix Graham. A suspicion that it
might be so she did feel,--a suspicion which would grow into a hope
let her struggle against it as she might. Baker, that injudicious
Baker, had dropped in her hearing a word or two, which assisted this
suspicion. And then the open frank question put to her by her father
when he demanded whether Graham had addressed her as a lover, had
tended towards the same result. What had she better do? Of one thing
she now felt perfectly certain. Let the world go as it might in
other respects, she could never leave her father's house as a bride
unless the bridegroom were Felix Graham. A marriage with him might
probably be impracticable, but any other marriage would be absolutely
impossible. If her father or her mother told her not to think of
Felix Graham, as a matter of course she would obey them; but not even
in obedience to father or mother could she say that she loved any one
else.

And now, all these matters having been considered, what should she
do? Her father had