ongs. Thinkright
had swung a hammock from one of its branches since Judge Trent's visit.
From beneath its shade was no view of the sea, but one could lie there
and listen to the rhythmic murmur of the waves answering the strains of
an AEolian harp which Thinkright's clever hands had fashioned and placed
in the shadow of the upper branches. There Sylvia took the books which
her cousin gave her to study, and read and study she did, despite the
temptation to day-dreaming. Little by little, by gentle implications,
Thinkright had conveyed to her that there was to be no thought of her
leaving him; and her love moved her strongly to do his bidding and win
his approval.

"He doesn't do it for my sake. He does it for God and mother," she
reflected, as often as some new proof of his thought for her appeared.
Little hints of the old yearnings to be admired, to be paramount,
flashed up through her new-found humility at times, but they grew
fainter with each discovery of her own ignorance, and her mental world
enlarged; and in this inner realm she always found two ideals reigning,
a prince and a princess,--John Dunham and Edna Derwent. They were
beings who breathed a rarer air than she had ever known. All that was
fine in her leaped to a comprehension that the more she developed, the
more she should value that in their experience which at present was a
sealed book to her. She always classed them together resolutely in her
thought. It was a species of self-defense which she had begun to employ
from the moment of mental panic which ensued upon Miss Derwent's
mention of Dunham's name.

Sylvia had read countless novels, for her father had been insatiate of
them; but she had been so confident of her own charm, and so busily
engaged in picturing the manner in which she should discourage or make
happy her suitors, that the possibilities of her own active
heart-interest had not absorbed much of her thought. The coming of John
Dunham into her life had changed all that. In a moment of high and
sensitive excitement he had dawned upon her vision as a novel type of
manhood, and one representing all that was desirable. In vain she knew
the superficiality of this judgment. In vain she reasoned her ignorance
of him and his character. He had captivated her imagination, and this
was the reason that Edna Derwent, as soon as she mentioned him, loomed
to Sylvia's stirred thought in the light of a dangerous foe. Edna's
very invincibility, however, aide