at my beautiful interlocutor in stupefaction. "My dear girl, what put that into your head?" I said at last.
"Because if the man is wicked now, I believe he was wicked then; and if he acted so nobly then, he would not act like a scoundrel now!"
This was sound logic. But what about the premises? "Has Mr. Travers been doing anything he should not?" I inquired.
She gave me an intent look, full of pain. She made an ineffective effort to speak, caught her breath, and was plainly tempted to cry, but drove the tears back. At last the words came, joltingly and ill-ordered, but their purport was plain enough.
"I had felt a prejudice against him—an instinct—at first. When Mr. Cattermole told us that thing, I was ashamed to have been so unjust. I forced myself to be pleasant to him. Besides, mother said—but that's no matter. And I thought Mr. Cattermole wished—because he and mother had been friends years ago, and he thought so much of Mr. Travers—that we should—" She made a gesture, to which I nodded comprehension. "Well, he has been saying and doing as men do—you must have seen how he has been doing. I could not like him; I tried to, but something in me fought against him in spite of myself. I hated his touch, or to have him near me, though I told myself I must be wrong. In the struggle I think I may sometimes have given him encouragement more than if I had disliked him less; but I had never wished to think of any man in that way. So he kept pushing himself forward; not delicately and reverently, but coarsely, sometimes saying things that I could have struck him for, and trying to take my hand, and even to—Ah!" she made a movement as if shaking a reptile from her.
I was very angry by this time, but I reflected that perhaps her temperamental aversion to the fellow might have led her to put too severe a contruction on his manifestations. "He is a young animal, of course," I said; "but it needn't follow that"
"Oh, I'm only a girl of twenty," she interrupted, "but I have been on the stage, and I know how men try to flirt, and how to check them. But this was different. I must try to tell you. Yesterday evening, to escape him, I went out by the north door, and to Bowlder Point alone. But he must have been on the watch, and he followed me."
Here she stopped. Her fingers were clutched together in her lap, her eyes were bent down, and I saw tears falling from them. I was seriously alarmed.
"Marion, your father could not feel more tenderly to you than I do," I said. "You need not tell me any more—if there is anything to tell. I shall understand if you are silent."
"No—no!" she cried, rising to her feet, sweeping the tears from her eyes and fixing them fiercely upon me. "Thank God, there was the precipice!"
The plashing of the waterfall—I shall never forget it!
"And you were forced to threaten that?" I asked, at length. She nodded.
We walked back to the house together slowly, consulting as we went. But the more I think over it, the more incomprehensible does it appear.
That Cattermole desires these two to marry appears certain. He spoke of love as indispensable to Marion's artistic development, and invited Morton here to meet her. He told us that story about the young man in order to incline Marion toward him. Morton's attentions toward her since then must have had Cattermole's approval, or he would have discouraged them.
On the other hand, Morton's future obviously depends on Cattermole's favor. Yet, what could more surely alienate it than his conduct last night? What, then, was his motive? Not the mad desperation of a rejected suitor, for Marion had not rejected him; he had not even offered himself to her. Since his fortune depends upon his winning her for his wife, why should he deliberately and gratuitously damn
