“He likes me because Lilian does, I suppose,” she said, when he had finished. “Did I tell you that his father and Geraldine,—that’s Lilian’s half-sister,—have always intended that he should marry Lilian? She told me so herself, and if she hadn’t, I should have known it from Geraldine, for you know I have been home with Lilian ever so many times, besides spending the long vacation there. I couldn’t bear her,—this Geraldine; she talked so insultingly to me, asking if I hadn’t the least idea _who_ I was, and saying once, right before Lawrence Thornton, that she presumed my mother was some poor, ignorant country girl, who had been unfortunate, and so disposed of me that way! I could have pulled every black hair out of her head!” and Mildred, who, in her excitement loosened a button in Oliver’s coat, looked much like the Mildred of old,—the child who had threatened to set fire to the Judge’s house if he sent her back to Hepsy. “Mildred,” said Oliver, smiling in spite of himself, and thinking how beautiful she looked even in her anger, “shall I tell you who _I_ think you are?” “Yes, yes,” and the wrathful expression of the soft, dark eyes disappeared at once. “Who am I, Oliver?” “I don’t know for certain,” he replied, “but I think you are Richard Howell’s daughter. Any way, you are the very counterpart of his sister’s picture.” “Mrs. Thornton, you mean,” returned Mildred. “There’s a portrait of her at Lawrence’s home. Almost everybody spoke of the resemblance while I was there; and once some one made a suggestion similar to yours, but Mr. Thornton said he knew every inch of ground Richard had gone over from the time he was twelve years old until he went away, and the thing wasn’t possible,—that the resemblance I bore to the Howells was merely accidental. I don’t like Mr. Thornton. He’s just as proud as Geraldine, and acted as if he were afraid Lawrence would speak to me. It was ‘Lawrence, Lilian wants you;’ ‘Lawrence, hadn’t you better take Lilian to ride, while I show Miss Howell my geological specimens.’ Just as though I cared for those old stones. He needn’t trouble himself, though, for I don’t like Lawrence half as well as I do you. But I must go back to Lilian,—she’ll wonder that I leave her so long.” “Lilian is here,” said a childish voice, and both Oliver and Mildred started quickly, as a little figure advanced from its position near the doorway, where, for the last two minutes, it had been standing. Oliver’s first thought was, “she has heard all Mildred said; she had no business to come up so quietly,” and with his previously formed impressions of the little lady, he was not prepared to greet her very cordially. But one glance at the baby face which turned towards him as Mildred said: “This is Oliver, Miss Veille,” convinced him that, if she had heard anything, it had not offended her. Indeed, Lilian Veille belonged to the class of whom it has been truly said, “they do not know enough to be offended.”