Minnie looks at him wistfully, and then says suddenly, "Do you know I like Algy very much! There is something so bright and winning and gay about him! I have known him so long--ever since he came here as a small child in a frock. And papa knew his father, Dr. Errington. He was a very clever man, a brilliant talker, and greatly sought after in society. Algy inherits all that. And he has--what they say his father had not--a temper that is almost perfect, thoroughly sound and sweet. I wish you liked him." "Who tells you that I do not like him? You are mistaken in fancying so. I think Errington one of the most winning fellows I ever knew in my life." "Y-yes; but you don't think so well of him as I do." "Perhaps that is hardly to be expected! And pardon me, Miss Bodkin, but you don't know----" "I know nothing about your thoughts on the subject!" interrupts Minnie quickly, and with a bright, mischievous glance. "Forgive my interrupting you; but when I am to have a cold shower-bath, I like to pull the string myself. Now it's over." "You think me a terrible bear," says Diamond, looking down on her beautiful, animated face. "Ah! take care. If I know nothing about your thoughts, how do you pretend to guess mine? Besides, I am not so zoological in my choice of epithets as your friend, Mrs. Errington. Papa nearly quarrelled with that lady on the subject of Algy's going away. But, you know, it is not all Mrs. Errington's fault. Algy chooses to try his fortune under the auspices of Lord Seely--I can see that plainly enough. And what Algy chooses his mother chooses. He has been terribly spoiled." "It is a great misfortune----" "To be spoiled?" "For him to have lost his father when he was a child. Otherwise he might not have been so pampered: though fathers spoil their children sometimes!" "Mine spoils me, I think. But then there is an excuse, after all, for spoiling me." "My dear Miss Bodkin, you cannot suppose that I had any such meaning." "You? Oh, no! You are honest: you never speak in innuendoes. But it is true, you know. My father and mother have spoiled me. Poor father and mother! I am but a miserable, frail little craft for them to have ventured so much love and devotion in!" It was not in mortal man--not even in mortal man whose heart was filled with a passion for another woman--to refrain from a tender glance and a soft tone, in answer to Minnie's pathetic little plaint. Her beauty and her intellect might be resisted: her helplessness, and acknowledgment of peculiar affliction, could not be. "Ah!" said Matthew Diamond; "who would not embark all their freight of affection in such a venture as the hope that you would love them again? I think your parents are paid."