oung lady."

"I hardly understand you," he replied. "The only conjecture they could
make, which they will certainly make, is that you are, or are about to
be, married to her; and as they will never see her again, and, if they
did, could not recognise her--as they will not to-morrow know anything
save that she belongs to my household, and certainly will not speak to
her--I do not see how their inference can affect her. When I part with
her, it will be to some one of my own customs and opinions; and to us
this close confinement of girls appears to transcend reasonable
restraint, as it contradicts the theoretical freedom and equality
granted by law to the sex, but utterly withheld by the social usages
which have grown out of that law."

"I can only thank you for giving me a companion more agreeable than
the official who is to report upon my reality," I said.

"I do not desire," he continued, "to bind you to any reserve in
replying to questions, beyond what I am sure you will do without a
pledge--namely, to avoid betraying more than you can help of that
which is not known outside my own household. But on this subject I may
be able to speak more fully after to-morrow. Now, if you will come
into the peristyle, we shall be in time for the evening meal."

Eveena's curiosity had in nowise overcome her silent shyness. She
might possibly have completed her tenth year, which epoch in the life
of Mars is about equivalent to the seventeenth birthday of a damsel
nurtured in North-Western Europe. I hardly think that I had addressed
her directly half-a-dozen times, or had received from her a dozen
words in return. I had been attracted, nevertheless, not only by her
grace and beauty, but by the peculiar sweetness of her voice and the
gentleness of her manner and bearing when engaged in pacifying dispute
or difficulty among the children, and particularly in dealing with the
half-deformed spoilt infant of which I have spoken. This evening that
little brat was more than usually exasperating, and having exhausted
the patience or repelled the company of all the rest, found itself
alone, and set up a fretful, continuous scream, disagreeable even to
me, and torturing to Martial ears, which, adapted to hear in that thin
air, are painfully alive to strident, harsh, or even loud sounds.
Instantly obeying a sign from her mother, Eveena rose in the middle of
a conversation to which she had listened with evident interest, and
devoted herself for