"You forget——"
"No; not a word against them. I won't listen," thrusting her fingers into her ears. "It is all over and done with long ago. And it is our turn now, and let us do things decently and in order, and create no heart-burnings."
"But when I think——"
"If thinking makes you look like that, don't think."
"But I must. I must remember how they scorned and slighted you. It never seems to have come home to me so vividly as now—now when you seem to have forgotten it. Oh, Barbara!" He presses back her head and looks long and tenderly into her eyes. "I was not mistaken, indeed, when I gave you my heart. Surely you are one among ten thousand."
"Silly boy," says she, with a little tremulous laugh, glad to her very soul's centre, however, because of his words. "What is there to praise me for? Have I not warned you that I am purely selfish? What is there I would not do for very love of you? Come, Freddy," shaking herself loose from him, and laughing now with honest delight. "Let us be reasonable. Oh! poor old uncle, it seems hateful to rejoice thus over his death, but his memory is really only a shadow after all, and I suppose he meant to make us happy by his gift, eh, Freddy?"
"Yes, how well he remembered during all these years. He could have formed no other ties."
"None, naturally." Short pause. "There is that black mare of Mike Donovan's, Freddy, that you so fancied. You can buy it now."
Monkton laughs involuntarily. Something of the child has always lingered about Barbara.
"And I should like to get a black velvet gown," says she, her face brightening, "and to buy Joyce a——Oh! but Joyce will be rich herself."