“Good thunder, what can a fellow do with such eyes looking into his, and such a face close to his own. Yes, I’ll give Bobum a hundred years if you say so, though nobody else under heaven could have coaxed me into it.” And in this the Judge was right, for none save Mildred could have induced him to give up his cherished scheme. “’Tisn’t none of my doings though,” he wrote in his letter to Mr. Thornton. “It’s all Gipsy’s work. She clambered into my lap, and coaxed, and teased, and cried, till I finally had to give in, though it went against the grain, I tell you, Bobum. Hadn’t you better twit her again with being low and mean. Ugh, you dog!” This letter the Judge would not send for a week or more, as he wished to torment Mr. Thornton as long as possible, never once thinking that by withholding it he was doing a wrong to Mildred. Mr. Thornton was not without kindly feelings, and had the letter been received before Lawrence’s departure he might perhaps have explained the whole to his son, for Mildred’s generous interference in his behalf touched his heart. But when the letter came Lawrence was already on the ocean, and as the days went on, his feelings of gratitude gradually subsided, particularly as Geraldine, who knew nothing of the circumstances, often talked to him of a marriage between Lawrence and Lilian as something sure to take place. “Only give him a little time to overcome his foolish fancy,” she said, “and all will yet be right.” So Mr. Thornton, over whom Geraldine possessed an almost unbounded influence, satisfied his conscience by writing to Mildred a letter of thanks, in which he made an attempt at an apology for anything he might have said derogatory to her birth and parentage. With a proud look upon her face, Mildred burned the letter, which seemed to her so much like an insult, and then, with a dull, heavy pain at her heart, she went about her accustomed duties, while the Judge followed her languid movements with watchful and sometimes tearful eyes, whispering often to himself: “I didn’t suppose she loved the boy so well. Poor Milly! Poor Milly!”