“Yes,” came faintly from the neighborhood of his hands, where Reinette’s face was hidden for an instant longer; then, freeing herself from him and stepping backward, she looked at him fixedly, until all the tears left her eyes, which twinkled mischievously as she burst into a merry laugh, and said: “No, I will be honest with you, Philip, and let you know just how bad I am. I didn’t like her! Oh, I know you are horrified and hate me, and think me awful,” she continued, as she sank into an easy-chair, and plunging the napkin into the bowl of water still standing there, spread it upon her head. “But you can’t understand how sudden it all is to me, who never knew I had a relative in America, unless it were some distant one on father’s side, and who, had I been told that I was first cousin to Queen Victoria, would not have been surprised, but rather have thought her majesty honored by the connection, so proud was I of my fancied blood. And to be told all these—” “What have you been told?” Phil asked, and she replied: “Everything, I am sure, or if there _is_ anything more I never wish to hear it. I know about the chimneys and the cellar walls, the gingerbread and the beer, and closing shoes, though what that is, I can’t even guess, and the runaway match, worse than all the rest unless it be those dreadful men who fought each other like beasts. What were their names? I cannot remember.” “You mean Uncle Tim and Uncle Will Martin,” Phil said, calling the men uncle for the first time in his life, although there was not a drop of their blood in his veins. But he would not hint that he was not as much a Martin as herself. “You mean Uncle Tim and Uncle Will, grandmother’s brothers; they were only great uncles, and had the good taste to get killed in the war. They can’t hurt you.” “I know that, but something hurts me cruelly,” Reinette replied, clenching her hands together. “And you don’t know how much I hate it all—hate everybody—and want to fight and tear somebody’s hair; that would relieve me, but it would not rid me of these dreadful people.” She looked like a little fury as she beat her hands in the air, and forgetting that they were strangers, Phil said to her: “You surprise me, Reinette, by taking so strange a view of the matter. Can you not understand that in America, where we boast of our democracy, there is no such commodity as blood, or if there is, it is so diluted and mixed that the original element is hard to find. It does not matter so much who you are, or who your parents were, as it does what you are yourself. “‘Honor and shame from no condition rise, Act well your part, there all the honor lies.’ “That used to be written for me in my copy-book at school, and I puzzled my brain over it to know what it meant, understanding at last that it was another version of that part of the church catechism which tells us to do our duty in that state of life to which God has called us.”