The magnificent girl looked at him over that fence and measured him. Yes, the worst had come at last, and an uncalled-for insult with it. How the stranger gloated over the fact that the place was _not_ her father's! She drew herself to her full height; her black eyes blazed; her cheeks became carmine. She could hardly control her voice from indignation. "You mistake, sir. This _is_ his place, and I think, sir, it will remain so." She looked at him fiercely and waited to let that sentiment fructify in the young man's soul. "Indeed, I--I hope so," ventured Ellesworth. Disregarding this as a feeble attempt at apology, she asked,-- "What is your name, sir? Do you come from _him_? Or are you _he_?" The contempt which she cast into the personal pronouns had a marked effect upon Ellesworth. The mere fact that a woman, for whom at first sight he felt a greater admiration than he had ever bestowed elsewhere, should be so antagonistic to him at the start, made his heart contract within him. Yet he managed to pull himself together and say, with admirable feint,-- "Excuse me. You must labor under a mistake. I am a total stranger here. I am--eh--merely looking about. I am staying at Sunshine, for my health." He noted with satisfaction a look of relief stealing over her face, and a slight touch of spontaneous sympathy, too, at his last statement. Ellesworth immediately followed the lead up. "Yes," he said, "I am an invalid, and was ordered South for my lungs. I have heard so much about Southern hospitality, would it be asking too much for me to rest here awhile? I am a trifle tired after this long ride." He heaved a sigh and tried to look utterly fagged out as he noticed how admirably that tack succeeded. "Oh, I beg your pardon, sir," said the girl impulsively. "I thought you were a lawyer or a sheriff, or perhaps a man from--_Boston_." She could hardly pronounce the name of the cultured city. It stuck in her throat. "I?" he asked in a tone of reproach. "Not at all," he answered, laughing. "I told you that I have come from Sunshine," he added, blandly. The girl, taking his negative as a reply to all her doubts, now opened the gate hospitably. "Forgive my rudeness, sir, and come in and sit awhile," she said, as prettily as a woman could. "I'll ask Aunt McCorkle to get you--something. Would you take a glass of milk?" She blushed as she remembered her empty wine cellar. With a well-feigned, languid air, which he could hardly maintain, so boisterously the blood surged through his veins, Ellesworth walked up to the piazza and sat down.