"And there," said the young lady, bringing him before the glass-case, "are family possessions. That is a coin of George II.; those are Pine-tree shillings; those yellow papers are two copies of a continental newspaper, and this is the South Carolinian continental penny." Ellesworth inspected the treasures gravely. He did his best not to smile. "Very remarkable!" he murmured. "How Southern!" he thought. "Colonel Tom Garvin says there are nothing like them in the country. I suppose they would bring a great deal if sold," she added, wistfully. "But we don't like to sell them. Besides, we never saw anybody who wanted to buy them." Acquaintance under one roof passes quickly into intimacy. Love moves with fleet feet when two young people breakfast and dine together with a vague chaperone. A tropical garden, soft evenings and youthful impetuosity shorten the span to experience thought necessary to precede an engagement. Georgiella was the soul of domestic comfort--as Southern women are. She was a high-spirited, variable, bewitching creature. At first, the Northerner could not understand her indifference to her obligations as a mortgager. Why did she not sell the Ming vase? She looked upon debt not as a disgrace, but as an inconvenience. Foreclosure proceedings were under way, and it never occurred to the two women to stop them with even a part of the fifty dollars which Ellesworth paid for his board in advance. When Ellesworth found out that this trait was not a pauper's, but like Georgiella's strange beauty, constitutional, he forbore to criticise it. In truth, he was too much in love now to criticise the girl at all. It is probable that if she had robbed his pocketbook he would have merely said, "How interesting! it is her tropical way." A day or two before Christmas he drove over to Sunshine and returned with a happy, tired face. "You would take a Christmas present from me, wouldn't you?" he asked with unprecedented humility. "It's in a paper," he explained. "What is it?" she asked uncomfortably, for she felt his serious look upon her. "It's--eh--a trifle that I think you will like," replied Ellesworth without a smile. * * * * * Christmas came cheerfully into the mortgaged house. Georgiella cried a little for her father's sake. In spite of her bereavement, and of the fact that she was sure the sheriff would attach the house that day of all others, she did not feel very wretched. She felt that she was wicked because she was so happy. There were wings in her heart. It was not the custom to hang up stockings at the Benson's. "My things have always been put into the Ming vase," Georgiella explained, "and the others went on the breakfast table."