“You have promised to marry a young man whom you do not love!” repeats Lucy, for the first time realizing that part of Jess’ excited remarks. She was about to add: “How could you do it?” Then she thinks better of what she was about to say, and goes on: “Mother says the greatest love has often commenced with a very decided aversion.” “I must marry John Dinsmore, but I shall hate him till the day I die!” sobbed Jess, vehemently. They have been so absorbed in their conversation that neither of the girls noted that Mr. Moore had made a tour of the grounds and entered the best room by the side door, and stood by the open window, looking out at them, screened by the heavy, white curtains. He had heard the last words of that conversation, and stepped back from the open window, with a very strange pallor upon his face, but it soon gave place to the cynical smile that played about his lips. “Woman-like, she is not disposed to lose the Dinsmore fortune,” he muttered. “She is worldly enough for that, childlike though she appears,” and he turns on his heel and walks as noiselessly out of the room and out of the house as he has entered. There is a sneering expression on his handsome, cold face. “Yes, she is like that other one,” he thinks, “willing to barter herself for glittering gold and the pleasures it may bring,” and he thinks of the lines which he applies to all womankind: “Away, away; you’re all the same, A flattering, smiling, jilting throng! Oh, by my soul! I burn with shame To think I’ve been your slave so long! Away, away! Your smile’s a curse; Oh! blot me from the race of men, Kind, pitying Heaven, by death or worse, Before I love such things again.” And as he walks quickly along, smoking the cigar which he has lighted, he thinks, amusedly, that the girl’s resolve to marry him is like the old quotation of counting chickens before they are hatched; for he has not as yet asked her hand in marriage--that marriage which is so distasteful to both of them--and then he falls to abusing the will which would tie them together for life--two who had not the slightest affection for each other. He wondered, as he smoked, what Jess would think if she knew that he was the obnoxious person whom that will had dealt with. He regarded her with a glance of keen scrutiny as she hurried down the walk and up to the rustic bench where he was seated an hour later. “I--I want to ask you a question, Mr. Moore!” she cried, breathlessly. “Will you answer it?” “If I can,” he responded, gravely, as he tossed aside his cigar, and made way for her on the rustic bench. But, instead of accepting the seat, she threw herself, with childish abandon, in the long grass at his feet, looking up at him with those great, dark, limpid eyes, which reminded him of a young gazelle. He leans back and watches her. She seems in no hurry to unbosom herself as to the question she has intimated that she is so eager to ask.