singer was giving her undivided attention to her
self-imposed task. Octavius took a stool and began work with another
cow. Champney, nothing loath to prolong the pleasure of looking at the
improvised milkmaid, waited before making his presence known until she
should have finished.

And watching her, he could but wonder at the ways of Chance that had
cast this little piece of foreign flotsam upon the shores of America,
only to sweep it inland to this village in Maine. He could not help
comparing her with Alice Van Ostend--what a contrast! What an abyss
between the circumstances of the two lives! Yet this one was decidedly
charming, more so than the other; for he was at once aware that Aileen
was already in possession of her womanhood's dower of command over all
poor mortals of the opposite sex--her manner with Octavius showed him
that; and Alice when he saw her last, now nearly six months ago, would
have given any one the impression of something still unfledged--a tall,
slim, overgrown girl of sixteen, and somewhat spoiled. This was indeed
only natural, for her immediate world of father, aunt, and relations had
circled ever since her birth in the orbit of her charming wilfulness.
Champney acknowledged to himself that he had done her bidding a little
too frequently ever since the first yachting trip, when as a little girl
she attached herself to him, or rather him to her as a part of her
special goods and chattels. At that time their common ground for
conversation was Aileen; the child was never tired of his rehearsing for
her delight the serenade scene. But in another year she lost this
interest, for many others took its place; nor was it ever renewed.

The Van Ostends, together with Ruth and her husband, had been living the
last three winters in Paris, Mr. Van Ostend crossing and recrossing as
his business interests demanded or permitted. Champney was much with
them, for their home was always open to him who proved an ever welcome
guest. He acknowledged to himself, while participating in the intimacy
of their home life, that if the child's partiality to his companionship,
so undisguisedly expressed on every occasion, should, in the transition
periods of girlhood and young womanhood, deepen into a real attachment,
he would cultivate it with a view to asking her in marriage of her
father when the time should show itself ripe. In his first youthful
arrogance of self-assertion he had miscalculated with Ruth Van Ostend.
He