“You’re cold; you’re shivering. You’ll catch an awful chill if you stay up here. Just go down back to the farm, Miss Claire, like a good girl”--and unconsciously his tone assumed the caressing accents one uses to a favorite child--“and you shall hear all you want to know in the morning.” But she stood her ground, making an impatient movement with one foot. “No, Bram, you must tell me now. What was it all about?” He hesitated. Even if he were able to put her off now, which seemed unlikely, she must hear the truth some day. It was only selfishness, the horror of himself giving her pain, which urged him to be reticent now. So he said to himself, doggedly preparing for his avowal. His anger against the Cornthwaites, his fear of hurting her, combined to make his tone sullen and almost fierce as he answered-- “Well, Miss Claire, I was angry wi’ him because I thought he hadn’t behaved as he ought.” There was a pause. It seemed to Bram that she guessed, with feminine quickness, what was coming. She spoke, after another of the short pauses with which their conversation was broken up, in a very low and studiously-restrained tone-- “How? To whom, Bram?” “To--to you, Miss Claire,” answered Bram with blunt desperation. Another silence. “Why, what has he done to me?” asked she at last. “He has gone and got engaged--to be married--to somebody else; that’s what he’s done, there!” Bram was fiercer than ever. “Well, and what of that?” He could not see her face, and her tone was one of careless bravado. But Bram was not deceived. He clenched his fists till the nails went deep into his flesh. It cut him in the heart to have to tell her this news, to feel what she must be suffering. He answered as quietly as he could. “Nothing, but that I think he ought--he ought----” “You think he ought to have told me. Oh, I guessed, I guessed what was going to happen,” replied Claire rapidly in an off-hand tone. “I should have heard it from himself to-morrow. Who--who is it?” “A Miss Hibbs.” “Oh, yes, of course. I might have known.” But her voice trembled, and Bram, turning quickly, saw that the tears were running down her cheeks. She was angry at being thus caught, and she dashed them away impatiently. “D---- him!” roared Bram, clenching his fists and his teeth. “Hush, Bram, hush! I’m surprised. I’m ashamed of you! And, besides, what does it matter to you or to me either whom Mr. Cornthwaite marries?” “It does matter. He ought to have married you, and taken you away out of the place, and away from the life you have to live with that old rascal----” Bram was beside himself; he did not know what he was saying. Claire stopped him, but very gently, saying-- “Hush, Bram. He’s my father.”