"It was indeed a revelation. My thoughts will not interest you, I fear. The experience of a man who saw a mirage in the desert came into my mind." "I don't see what put that into your head." "Nor do I, now. The world appears to me entirely matter-of-fact." "I'm glad to hear you say that. Mother is always talking to me about spiritual meanings and all that. Now I agree with you. Things are just what they are. Some we like, and some we don't like. What more is there to say about them? I think people are very foolish if they bother themselves over things or people they don't like. I hope mother will take you to board, for I would like to have some one in the house who looks at things as I do." "Thanks. Woman's intuition is indeed unerring." "I declare, there comes Silas Jones with his new top-buggy. You won't mind his making one of our party, will you?" "I think I will go to my room and rest awhile, and thus I shall not be that chief of this world's evils--the odious third party." And I rose decisively. "I'd rather you wouldn't go," she said. "I don't care specially for him, and he does not talk half so nicely as you do. You needn't go on his account. Indeed, I like to have half a dozen gentlemen around me." "You are delightfully frank." "Yes, I usually say what I think." "And do as you please," I added. "Certainly. Why shouldn't I when I can? Don't you?" "But I came from the wicked city." "So does Emily Warren." "Is she wicked?" "I don't know; she keeps it to herself if she is; and, by the way, she is very quiet, I can never get her to talk much about herself. She appears so good that mother is beginning to quote her as an example, and that, you know, always makes one detest a person. I think there is some mystery about her. I'm sorry you will go, for I've lots of questions I'd like to ask you now we are acquainted." "Pardon me; I'm not strong, and must have a rest. Silas Jones will answer just as well." "Not quite," she said softly, with a smile designed to be bewitching. As I passed up the hall I heard her say, "Silas Jones, I'm pleased to see thee." I threw myself on the lounge in my room in angry disgust. "O Nature!" I exclaimed, "what excuse have you for such perverseness? By every law of probability--by the ordinary sequence of cause and effect--this girl should have been what I fancied her to be. This, then, forsooth, is the day of my fate! It would be the day of doom did some malicious power chain me to this brainless, soulless, heartless creature. What possessed Nature to make such a blunder, to begin so fairly and yet reach such a lame and impotent conclusion? To the eye the girl is the fair and proper outcome of this home and beautiful country life. In reality she is a flat contradiction to it all, reversing in her own character the native traits and acquired graces of her father and mother.