"He has kissed me twice," she whispered to her heart, "and yet I do not even know his name. I wonder if I shall ever see him again. I hope I shall."
As she remembered how earnestly he had apologized for his presence in her room, she could not believe him the wicked villain old Dinah had so loudly represented him.
"He is handsome, and I believe that he is good," the girl said to herself, "and they tell me Elinor wants to marry him; I would like to marry him myself, just to spite my cousins."
Poor little Golden! Her spite against her cousins was almost as old as her years. They had always hated her, and Golden had been quick to find it out and resent it.
She had a quick and fiery temper, but it did not take her long to repent of her little fits of passion.
She was a bright, winsome, lovable child. It was a wonder that anyone could hate her for her beautiful, innocent life.
Yet there were those who did, and it was beginning to dawn vaguely on the mind of the girl that it was so. She knew that her life was passed differently from that of the other girls of her age and class.
There were no teachers, no companions, no pleasures for her, and no promise of any change in the future.
She wondered a little why it was so, but she never complained to her grandfather. It was, perhaps, only his way, she said to herself, little dreaming of the dark mystery that lay like a deep, impassible gulf between her and the dwellers in the outside world of which she knew so very, very little.