He also felt that there was no occasion to imagine any deep mystery to be part of her past history. The facts that she was poor and orphaned suggested all the explanations needed, and he felt sure that the sorrows she so sacredly and unselfishly shrouded from the general view would be frankly revealed to the man who might win the right to comfort and sustain her. Could he win that right? Did he wish to win it? As day after day passed he felt this question to be growing more and more vitally important. He was not one he believed who, like Stanton, could be carried away by a sudden and absorbing passion. In any and every case, reason, judgment, and taste would offer their counsel, and their advice would be carefully weighed. With increasing distinctness, this cabinet within his own breast urged him to observe this maiden well lest the chief opportunity of his life pass beyond recall. And he did study her character carefully. Stanton, with the keen pain of jealousy, and Ida Mayhew with a disquiet and sinking of heart that she could not understand, noted that he very quietly and unobtrusively sought her society. When she spoke, he listened. When it was possible without attracting attention his eyes followed her, and yet his conduct was governed so thoroughly by good taste and chivalric regard for the lady herself, that only eyes rendered penetrating by the promptings of the heart would have seen anything more than the general friendliness which she inspired on every side. Stanton, on the contrary, grew more undisguised and demonstrative in his attentions, although he aimed to conceal his feeling under the humorous and bantering style of address that was habitual with him. The guests of the house were not very long in recognizing in him an admirer of Miss Burton, but they imagined that his devotion was caused more by a wish to while away his idle hours than from any other motive; and it was also quite evident that the young lady herself took the same view. She gave a light and humorous aspect to everything she said, and permitted him scarcely an opportunity for a solitary "tete-a-tete." In vain he placed his bays and buggy at her disposal. "I am social and gregarious in my tastes," she would reply, "and need the exhilaration of a party to enjoy myself."