"Soon, my darling--you do not know how hard I am working--soon as I can possibly accomplish it." "Work!" she replied. "A man may work for a lifetime and yet never earn sufficient to build a house, much less a castle. Look at my father, how hard he works, yet he is not rich, and never will be." "But my work is different from his, Doris. There have been poets who have made large fortunes." "And there have been poets who starved in a garret," she replied. "But I have not that intention," cried Earle, with a look of power. "I will win wealth for you--the thought of you gives me skill, nerve, and courage for anything. Have patience, my darling!" "Oh, Earle, it was so beautiful!" she cried, pitilessly interrupting him; "and that Lady Estelle wore such a beautiful dress! She has a strange way of moving--it produces a strange effect--so slowly and so gracefully, as though she were moving to the rhythm of some hidden music. And those rooms--I can never forget them! To think that people should live and move in the midst of such luxury!" He raised the white hand to his lip. "They are not all happy, Doris. Oh, believe me, darling! money, luxury, magnificence cannot bring happiness. Sooner or later one wearies of them." "I never should," she answered, gently. "If I could live twenty lives, instead of one, I should never weary. I should like every hour of each of them to be filled with pleasure." "That is because you have had so little," he said, wistfully. "You shall have a bright future." Just at that moment Mattie Brace entered the room, and Doris looked at her with a smile. "A little brown mouse, like Mattie," she said, "can easily be content. You are happy as the day is long, are you not, Mattie?" The quiet brown eyes, with their look of wistful pain, rested for one moment upon Earle, then the young girl said, calmly: "Certainly I am happy and content. Why should I not be? I always think that the same good God who made me knew how and where to place me, and knew best what I was fitted for." "There," said Doris, "that is the kind of material your model women are made of. I shall never be a model woman--Mattie will never be anything else." "Mattie is quite right," said Earle. "There is nothing so vain and so useless as longing for that which we can never attain. Come, Doris, you look better and brighter than you did when I first came in. Tell me all about your day at the Castle." She told him of the duke's kind reception, of Lady Estelle's condescension, of all the beautiful things she had seen, and how the duke's daughter had given her some flowers, and talked to her. But not one word did she say of Lord Charles Vivianne. It was better, she thought, not even to mention that. "I am sorry you ever went near the Castle," said Mattie, gravely. "I do not think you will ever be quite the same girl again, and I have a presentiment that in some shape or other evil will come of it."