“But it _wasn’t_ worth all that you gave me for it,” cried Victoria, turning towards him her flushed and troubled face, and, in her excitement, allowing her feet to slip down into the bottom of the boat. “It wasn’t! That is just it! You gave me more than you should have done; and I accepted it, which was dreadful! When I came home and told the girls about it, Honor hoped that I should never see you again. She felt very badly about it, and so did I. I didn’t dare tell them that it was you. That is the reason I ran away the day we went to call on your sister and I saw you in the parlor. The girls couldn’t understand it, and have never been able to since.” “Then they don’t know it yet?” “No. I have never dared tell them.” “Then don’t tell them now, will you? It might prejudice them against me.” “I won’t if I can help it,” said Victoria. “They asked me last night about it, and said that Sophy repeated something I said yesterday afternoon. I think I should have told them then if Katherine hadn’t heard that noise in the shrubbery just at that minute, and we were interrupted.” “But I wish you would explain why you feel so,” said Roger, with a puzzled expression upon his face. “Why did you wish to avoid me? Why did you never wish to see me again? I can’t understand.” “Dear me, you are very dense!” exclaimed Victoria. “It is as simple as possible, I’m sure! In the first place, I took ten dollars more from you, or five dollars at least, than I should have done, because there was no reason why you should give me more than you would have paid in the store. Then, it—well, Honor felt dreadfully about having let me go to Boston to sell those etchings, and said I ought not to have gone alone, and you, ‘the young man,’ would think it very strange that I was allowed to go when I was so young, and she should have gone with me. That is the reason she hoped we should never see you again. Then when you came here to live I couldn’t tell her that you were the one, because she had felt uncomfortable about calling on your sister anyhow.” “But why?” asked Madison. “Didn’t she like our looks?” “Oh, not that at all! Because we are so poor and are working for our living. She felt that you were strangers and perhaps wouldn’t understand, and perhaps wouldn’t want us to call upon you or know you. You see, we haven’t always been so, and it makes it harder. We had great difficulty, Katherine and I, in getting her to go, and when she finally did and liked you all so much I couldn’t bear to spoil it by telling her.”