her boys, and poor Piers is
lame, and they all want something."

"You don't seem to want anything yourself," Mr. Arundel said.

"No: I have a happy home and everything is beautiful about me. What
_can_ I want?"

"Not to go to London, or Bath, or to see the world?" he asked.

"I think," said Joyce, simply, "if it came in my way--I mean if there
was plenty of money--I should like to travel a little. Can you believe
that I have only been to Bath once and to Bristol twice in my life? and
I am nearly eighteen. My Cousin Charlotte, who lives at Wells with my
aunt, has been to school in Bath, but father never wished me to go to
school, so I have no accomplishments. But I need not talk any more about
myself, it cannot be interesting."

Gilbert Arundel was beginning a speech to the effect that what she said
was most interesting to him, but somehow it died away on his lips. The
sweet earnestness of the face which he had been watching while she
spoke, the entire absence of self-consciousness, seemed to lift her
above the level of compliments or flattery, which the gentlemen of the
time considered the rightful inheritance of the young ladies, with whom
they trifled for an hour's amusement.

As she sat with her face towards the beautiful landscape over which the
westering sun was casting its level rays, she seemed so far above him
and bearing the "lily in her hand" of which a poet of later days than
those in which Joyce lived has said that--

"Gates of brass cannot withstand
One touch of that enchanted wand."

The silence which fell over Gilbert was unbroken for a few minutes by
any word on either side. At last Joyce said:

"Is there anything I can do for Melville? He has rather a way of looking
down on me, and I think I speak crossly to him sometimes. I wish you
would tell me if you think I could help father about him."

"If he does not listen to _you_ I should think it hopeless that he would
listen to anyone," Gilbert said; "he has a way of looking down on most
people."

"Not on _you_?" Joyce said, with a little innocent laugh. "He made us
think you were very grand and that we must alter all our ways to suit
you; poor mother was to change the hours for meals, and----"

"I never heard such nonsense," Gilbert said; "but I know where he got
those notions from, and I may tell you this much, that the kindest thing
you can do is to ask your father, to consent to his going abroad for a
year as soon as may be; he will b