is what happened to Ruth's parents, as nearly as any one but Alston knows. Most likely he knows nothing more." "And knowing this, she loves him, and the judge and his nephew trust him?" "The child doesn't know anything about it. Who would tell her? He is like her father--he could not have been more tender of her had she been his own child. There is nothing strange in her loving him; it would be far more strange if she did not. She is a gentle, loving nature, and he has done everything to win her love, and you know what he is." "How can any creature in human form be so utterly unnatural--so wholly a monster? How can he endure to see her, much less profess fondness for her, knowing what he has done?" "I have thought a good deal about that, and I have never been able to make up my mind. You see we don't know that he has done anything wrong. Yet it may be an unconscious expiation. Who knows? The human heart is a mysterious thing. But it is most likely that he simply began to love her when she was a baby, just because she was so lovely that he couldn't help it. She won all hearts in her cradle--the little witch. I remember very well how she used to keep me from my work, by curling her rose leaf of a hand around one of my rough fingers, before she could talk." "But why--loving her--should he wish to marry her against her will?" "We do not know that it is against her will. That is to say, I know nothing of the kind, and I have no reason even to think it." There was a silence after this. Paul Colbert was suddenly realizing that he also had no reason to think her unwilling; but this did not comfort him or change his feeling. It is the delight and misery of love never to have anything to do with reason.