But the sittings did not thus fall out. Earle grew much interested, and he and Gregory took a hearty liking for each other. Gregory admired Doris as a beauty, but his experienced eye detected the lacking loveliness of her soul. Besides, he had no love but art, and his heart shrined one sacred pervading memory. Daily, as he painted, that haunting reminiscence of some long-ago-seen face, or painted portrait, grew upon him. He looked at Doris and searched the past. One day he cried out, as he painted: "I have it!" "What have you?" demanded Doris, curiously. "A face, a name, that you constantly brought to mind in a shadowy way--that you resembled." "Man or woman?" demanded Doris, eagerly. "A man." She was disappointed. She had hoped to hear of some reigning belle of society. "Was he handsome?" she asked, less interested. "Remarkably so. How else, if your face was like his?" "But how can it be like a stranger I never heard of?" "A coincidence--a freak of nature," said Leslie, slowly. "And what was he like?" demanded Doris. "_Faithless and debonair!_ False, false and fair, like all his line. It was a fatal race; he no worse than the rest." CHAPTER XV. "I WILL BE TRUE--FOREVER." Despite all the love eagerly made by Earle, and readily accepted by Doris, there was no formal engagement. A hundred times the decisive words trembled on the lips of the poet-lover, and he chided himself that they were not uttered. But then, if she said "no," what lot would be his? As for Doris not being prepared to say "yes," she deferred decision, and checked Earle on the verge of a finality, for she was not ready to dismiss her suitor. If he fled from Brackenside, what pleasure would be left in life? She had soon ceased her efforts to flirt with Gregory Leslie; he regarded her with the eye of an artist--what of his feeling that was not artistic, was paternal. At first, she had hoped that an opening might be made for her to city life. She had wild dreams that he could get an engagement for her as an actress or concert-singer, where wonderful beauty would make up for lack of training; she built wild castles in the air, about titled ladies who would take her for an adopted daughter, or as a companion. But Gregory Leslie was the last man to tempt a lovely, heedless young girl to the vortex of city life. She told him one day of some of her longings and distastes. She hated the farm, the country. She wanted the glory of the city--dress, theaters, operas, promenades. "Can't you tell me how to get what I want?" "Child," said Gregory, "you would weary of it, and long for peace. You have a devoted young lover, who offers you a comfortable home at Lindenholm." "To live with my mother-in-law!" sneered Doris. "An admirable woman. I have met her." "It would be just this dullness repeated all my life," said Doris, tearful and pouting.