I laughed out, with the most perfect sympathy in her sentiment; and then she laughed, and looked at me exactly as an infant does in mirthful play. "Now, Miss Benette, one more question. Mr. Davy told me the other night that you had done him good. What did he mean?" "I do not think I can tell you what I believe he meant, because you might mention it to him; and if he did not mean that, he would think me silly, and I would not seem silly to him." "Now, do pray tell me! Do you suppose I can go home unless you will? You have made me so dreadfully curious. I should not think of telling him you had told me. Now, what did you do for him that made him say so?" She replied, with an innocence the sister of which I have never seen through all my dreams of woman,-- "Mr. Davy was so condescending as to ask me one day whether I would be his wife,--sometime when I am grown up. And I said, No. I think that was the good I did him." I shall never forget the peculiar startled sensation that struck through me. I had never entertained such a notion, or any notion of the kind about anybody; and about her it was indeed new, and to me almost an awe. "The good you did him, Miss Benette!" I cried in such a scared tone that she dropped her work into her lap. "I should have thought it would have done him more good if you had said, Yes." "You are very kind to think so," she replied, in a tone like a confiding child's to a superior in age,--far from like an elder's to one so young as myself,--"but I know better, Master Auchester. It was the only thing I could do to show my gratitude." "Were you sorry to say No, Miss Benette?" "No; very glad and very pleased." "But it is rather odd. I should have thought you would have liked to say, Yes. You do not love him, then?" "Oh! yes, I do, well. But I do not wish to belong to him, nor to any one,--only to music now; and besides, I should not have had his love. He wished to marry me that he might take care of me. But when he said so, I answered, 'Sir, I can take care of myself.'" "But, Miss Benette, how much should one love, and how, then, if one is to marry? For I do not think all people marry for love!" "You are not old enough to understand, and I am not old enough to tell you," she said sweetly, with her eyes upon her work as usual, "nor do I wish to know. If some people marry not for love, what is that to me? I am not even sorry for them,--not so sorry as I am for those who know not music, and whom music does not know." "Oh! they are worse off!" I involuntarily exclaimed. "Do you think I am 'known of music,' Miss Benette?" "I daresay; for you love it, and will serve it. I cannot tell further, I am not wise. Would you like to have your fortune told?" "Miss Benette! what do you mean? You cannot tell fortunes!" "But Thoné can. She is a gypsy,--a real gypsy, Master Auchester, though she was naughty, and married out of her tribe." "What tribe?"