"Besides"--she continued--"she has no right over me." "Who HAS any right over you?" he asked, curiously. She laughed, softly. "No one!--except you!" "Oh, hang me!" he exclaimed, impatiently--"Leave me out of the question. Have you no father or mother?" She was a little hurt at his sudden irritability. "No," she answered, quietly--"I have often told you I have no one. I am alone in the world--I can do as I like." Then a smile brightened her face. "Lord Blythe would have me as a daughter if I would go to him." He started and loosened her from his embrace. "Lord Blythe! That wealthy old peer! What does he want with you?" "Nothing, I suppose, but the pleasure of my company!" and she laughed--"Doesn't that seem strange?" He rose and went back to work at his easel. "Rather!" he said, slowly--"Are you going to accept his offer?" Her eyes opened widely. "I? My Amadis, how can you think it? I would not accept it for all the world! He would load me with benefits--he would surround me with luxuries--but I do not want these. I like to work for myself and be independent." He laid a brush lightly in colour and began to use it with delicate care. "You are not very wise," he then said--"It's a great thing for a young girl like you who are all alone in the world, to be taken in hand by such a man as Blythe. He's a statesman,--very useful to his country,--he's very rich and has a splendid position. His wife's sudden death has left him very lonely as he has no children,--you could be a daughter to him, and it would be a great leap upwards for you, socially speaking. You would be much better off under his care than scribbling books." She drew a sharp breath of pain,--all the pretty colour fled from her cheeks. "You do not care for me to scribble books!" she said, in low, stifled accents. He laughed. "Oh, I don't mind!--I never read them,--and in a way it amuses me! You are such an armful of sweetness--such a warm, nestling little bird of love in my arms!--and to think that you actually write books that the world talks about!--the thing is so incongruous--so 'out of drawing' that it makes me laugh! I don't like writing women as a rule--they give themselves too many airs to please me--but you--" He paused. "Well, go on," she said, coldly. He looked at her, smiling. "You are cross? Don't be cross,--you lose your enchanting expression! Well--you don't give yourself any airs, and you seem to play at literature like a child playing at a game: of course you make money by it,--but--you know better than I do that the greatest writers"--he emphasized the word "greatest" slightly--"never make money and are never popular." "Does failure constitute greatness?" she asked, with a faintly satirical inflection in her sweet voice which he had never heard before. "Sometimes--in fact pretty often," he replied, dabbing his brush busily on his canvas--"You should read about great authors--"