"I don't see what harm there would be in that," said the owner of the name, "or what object," she added more discreetly. --"I should feel that I had made a great gain." "I never told you," answered Kitty, evasively, "how much I admire _your_ first name, Mr. Arbuton." "How did you know it?" "It was on the card you gave my cousin," said Kitty, frankly, but thinking he now must know she had been keeping his card. "It's an old family name,--a sort of heirloom from the first of us who came to the country; and in every generation since, some Arbuton has had to wear it." "It's superb!" cried Kitty. "Miles! 'Miles Standish, the Puritan captain,' 'Miles Standish, the Captain of Plymouth.' I should be very proud of such a name." "You have only to take it," he said, gravely. "O, I didn't mean that," she said with a blush, and then added, "Yours is a very old family, then, isn't it?" "Yes, it's pretty well," answered Mr. Arbuton, "but it's not such a rare thing in the East, you know." "I suppose not. The Ellisons are _not_ an old family. If we went back of my uncle, we should only come to backwoodsmen and Indian fighters. Perhaps that's the reason we don't care much for old families. You think a great deal of them in Boston, don't you?" "We do, and we don't. It's a long story, and I'm afraid I couldn't make you understand, unless you had seen something of Boston society." "Mr. Arbuton," said Kitty, abruptly plunging to the bottom of the subject on which they had been hovering, "I'm dreadfully afraid that what you said to me--what you asked of me, yesterday--was all through a misunderstanding. I'm afraid that you've somehow mistaken me and my circumstances, and that somehow I've innocently helped on your mistake." "There is no mistake," he answered, eagerly, "about my loving you!" Kitty did not look up, nor answer this outburst, which flattered while it pained her. She said, "I've been so much mistaken myself, and I've been so long finding it out, that I should feel anxious to have you know just what kind of girl you'd asked to be your wife, before I--" "What?" "Nothing. But I should want you to know that in many things my life has been very, very different from yours. The first thing I can remember--you'll think I'm more autobiographical than our driver at Ha-Ha Bay, even, but I must tell you all this--is about Kansas, where we had moved from Illinois, and of our having hardly enough to eat or wear, and of my mother grieving over our privations. At last, when my father was killed," she said, dropping her voice, "in front of our own door--" Mr. Arbuton gave a start. "Killed?" "Yes; didn't you know? Or no: how could you? He was shot by the Missourians."