"Forgive me, Aunt Wardor; I shan't forget my young-lady manners again for a whole week. But it did seem such a relief, just the thought of getting away from this cramped little house, and into the open air again, that I could not help being rude to Lady Clara." She seized the slender fingers of the young lady, in spite of the little spasmodic motion with which they seemed to shrink from the hearty grasp. "But, Barbara," urged Mrs. Wardor, somewhat mollified by the affectionate "Aunt," "when a girl of your age avers that she is a young lady, how can she constantly forget herself, and act the child and the romp again." A flush passed over the girl's face, a handsome face, full of life and animation, which a few little freckles seemed really to finish off, as she turned sharply from both, and seated herself in the most stately manner at the grand piano, the recent birthday gift of her father. Barbara was his only daughter, "and he a widower," who was surprised one day to find that she was receiving the marked attentions of a young gentleman matrimonially inclined, at the springs where she was spending her vacations, with all the assurance and matter-of-course air of a "grown-up lady," when he had never dreamed but that she was only a child. He thought to cut the matter short by returning her instantly to the seminary; but soon learned from the conscientious lady at the head of the establishment that the young gentleman was persistent in his devotions, and Miss Barbara as persistent in breaking the rules of the institution. Then he bethought him of a lady whose calm dignity and quiet self-possession had always somewhat oppressed him when he had occasionally met her in his wife's parlors, during that estimable woman's life time. And recollecting how his wife had honestly lamented that her daughter could not live under the influences of a cultivated mind, and the refined manners which she, herself, did not possess, he went boldly to Mrs. Wardor one day, and proposed that she should take charge of the self-willed girl, who insisted on being treated with the consideration due a young lady owning a declared, though forbidden lover. To Mrs. Wardor the proposition was acceptable; some years before, true to the "gambling instincts" of an old Californian, her husband had staked his all on some favorite mining stock, and, after losing, had taken his chances of striking something better in the next world, by blowing his brains out when he found himself "on bedrock" in this. Like a sensible woman, she had given up her elegant establishment without grieving very much, had secured a smaller house, and thought herself fortunate in finding a class of boarders who shocked neither her sensitive nerves nor her fastidious taste.