As for Garth, he conducted himself as most high-spirited young men do under the circumstances. He took his cup of cold tea from her hand mutely, much as though it were a dose of poison, and stood aloof, glowering at her at intervals, and talking faster than usual to Mr. Cunningham. He did not make much of a reply when, after prayers, Dora lighted his silver candlestick as well as her father's, and hoped he would sleep well. "Good night, Dorrie my dear," observed her father, kissing her smooth forehead just above her eyes. "Don't forget you have a long journey before you to-morrow." "Good night, Miss Cunningham," said Garth with pointed emphasis as he just touched her hand. He thought the coldness of his tone would have cut her to the heart, but she merely smiled in his face. Garth went up-stairs in a tumult of vexation and excitement. The porch-chamber, with its sweet perfume of fresh lavender, no longer charmed him. The girlish reflection of Dora with its arms full of lilies angered him. He turned his back upon it and sat down by the open window. He was bitterly mortified and disappointed. Dora had been his fate, he told himself, and now his fate had eluded him. She had drawn him on with sweet looks and half-sentences of fondness all these years, and now she had declined to yield to his first honest efforts of persuasion. Well, he was not the man to be fooled by any girl, though she had golden hair and knew how to use her eyes. She was managing him for her own purposes, but he would prove to her that he was not to be managed. He would shake off her influence much as he had done her hand on his coat-sleeve just now; all the more that such shaking off might be difficult to him. There were other women in the world, thank heaven, beside Dora--women who would be more subservient to his masculine royalty, whose wills and lives could be moulded by his. His heart was still whole within him, though his pride was so grievously wounded. He knew that, as he turned his back upon her picture, and sat down in his sullen resentment. There was no inward bleeding, no sickness of repressed hopes driven back upon themselves, no yearning void, only the bitterness of an angry wound, against which he called out in his young man's impatience. The golden head would not come and nestle against him when he longed for it, and now he thrust it from him.