George Lauriston listened to this harangue with every feeling of tenderness that can move a man, from that of a father for a wayward child to that of a lover for a beautiful woman. He saw in her alternately bold and ingenuous words, in the wondering child looks that came into her eyes between passionate ebullitions of love, of anger, and of pride, in the utter absence of a grown woman’s modest reticence, that the little creature before him was now, whatever time and her fellow-men might hereafter make of her, nothing but a wild, untrained, half-grown young thing, with the good and bad impulses of a savage, and a thousand fascinations which would be so many desperate dangers to her ill-guarded womanhood. In those few moments Lauriston made up his mind. The girl had for him an irresistible attraction which made every other woman insipid and inane. In spite of her mysterious antecedents, of her equivocal surroundings, he believed most firmly in her native innocence and goodness. Her odd sense of her own dignity, her passionate love for her mother, her plaintive account of her impression of the first meeting with himself, all tended to confirm this opinion, and also to give some weight to the shadowy legends which seemed to form her personal history. He would write to the mother, if possible go and see her, ask her consent to his engagement to her daughter, and himself choose some home where the girl might spend a couple of years in good hands, while he on his side would strain every nerve and save every penny that he might be able, at the end of that time, to make her his wife. He had no doubts about the success of his suit; everything pointed to the fact that this shadowy adored and adoring mother would be glad to get the half-spoilt, half-neglected, wholly ill-brought-up girl, off her hands. He looked down again on the little creature as she, in a fit of petulance at her inability to pique him, leant against the wall and, like a mischievous monkey, tore one of the loose muslin sleeves of her dress into strips. Observing this suggestive occupation, George felt suddenly appalled by the enormous hardihood of the undertaking to which he was inwardly pledging himself. She glanced up, saw the look of consternation on his face, and fell into convulsions of stifled laughter. The set expression on his features broke up, as he laid his hand very tenderly upon her shoulder. “Hush, you mustn’t laugh like that. You will make yourself ill.” Sensitive to every change of feeling as an Eolian harp is to every breath of air, she was quiet at once, and putting both her own hands on his to keep it on her shoulders, she said in a very soft voice, with earnest eyes that seemed to draw out from his the emotion she knew how to excite in him: “Ah, I like to hear you speak to me like that. You must always speak like that to me, and then I will always be like this.”