"Yes," said Mary frankly, "I like him very much. We have enough in common to be rather sympathetic, and we differ enough not to be dull, and so we get on very well. I never had a brother," she continued, after a momentary pause, "but I feel toward him as I fancy I should feel toward a brother of about my own age, though he is five or six years older than I am." "You don't think, then," said Mrs. Carling timidly, "that you are getting to care for him at all?" "In the sense that you use the word," was the reply, "not the least in the world. If there were to come a time when I really believed I should never see him again, I should be sorry; but if at any time it were a question of six months or a year, I do not think my equanimity would be particularly disturbed." "And how about him?" suggested Mrs. Carling. There was no reply. "Don't you think he may care for you, or be getting to?" Mary frowned slightly, half closing her eyes and stirring a little uneasily in her chair. "He hasn't said anything to me on the subject," she replied evasively. "Would that be necessary?" asked her sister. "Perhaps not," was the reply, "if the fact were very obvious." "Isn't it?" persisted Mrs. Carling, with unusual tenacity. "Well," said the girl, "to be quite frank with you, I have thought once or twice that he entertained some such idea--that is--no, I don't mean to put it just that way. I mean that once or twice something has occurred to give me that idea. That isn't very coherent, is it? But even if it be so," she went on after a moment, with a wave of her hands, "what of it? What does it signify? And if it does signify, what can I do about it?" "You have thought about it, then?" said her sister. "As much as I have told you," she answered. "I am not a very sentimental person, I think, and not very much on the lookout for such things, but I know there is such a thing as a man's taking a fancy to a young woman under circumstances which bring them often together, and I have been led to believe that it isn't necessarily fatal to the man even if nothing comes of it. But be that as it may," she said with a shrug of her shoulders, "what can I do about it? I can't say to Mr. Lenox, 'I think you ought not to come here so much,' unless I give a reason for it, and I think we have come to the conclusion that there is no reason except the danger--to put it in so many words--of his falling in love with me. I couldn't quite say that to him, could I?" "No, I suppose not," acquiesced Mrs. Carling faintly. "No, I should say not," remarked the girl. "If he were to say anything to me in the way of--declaration is the word, isn't it?--it would be another matter. But there is no danger of that." "Why not, if he is fond of you?" asked her sister. "Because," said Mary, with an emphatic nod, "I won't let him," which assertion was rather weakened by her adding, "and he wouldn't, if I would." "I don't understand," said her sister.