"I grant that, else would the world be innocent and dull."
Joan pursed up her pretty lips and wrinkled a smooth brow. "I don't understand that," said she, meditatively.
"No," assented Leah, with a slow and somewhat envious look; "you never will."
"Why not?"
"I could give you fifty reasons, but three will do. You are good and kind and healthy-minded to excess--an angel, whose white wings flutter above the mire in which we bipeds grovel. Quite the wife for our unsophisticated padre. St. Sebastian and St. Cecilia--surely a marriage arranged in heaven."
Miss Tallentire could not quite follow Leah's flights--not an infrequent occurrence. Nevertheless, her intuition espied a compliment.
"Do you really mean that?"
"As I rarely mean anything. Let me be candid for once, since we converse in the nursery, and say that I respect Lionel and I respect you."
"I would rather have love," suggested the girl, timidly.
Leah touched her breast with eight finger-tips. "From----" Then in response to an answering blush: "My dear, I love no one but myself."