"You ought to have your head carried on a pike," said Mrs. Montresor, again. "You will, if we ever have any _bonnets rouges_ in America. You are the aristocrat pure and simple. The Princess Lamballe was nothing to you. You think humanity exists so that _nous autres_, by standing on it, may get the light and air. You are sure that you are made of different clay--the canaille of street mud, for instance, and you of the fine white stuff from which they mould Dresden china. You are quite a study to me, my love. I expect to see you marry a pavior yet, either one who lays down or one who tears up paving-stones." But I had only laughed again. She plumed herself on being cosmopolitan even to her principles. "You give me credit for too much thinking on the subject," I said, "if it is credit. Indeed, I don't concern myself about such people; and as for marrying one of them, I could as soon marry into a different race, African or Mongolian. They are a different race." And I remembered all this as Colonel Vorse stood leaning his hand above me on the jamb of the window-frame--for although I was tall, he was a son of Anak--with that air which, never vaunting strength, always made you aware of its repression. I could fancy hearing Mrs. Montresor say, "That air of his! it always fetches women!" for she loved a little slang, by some antipodal attraction of her refinement, and I instinctively stiffened myself, determined it should never fetch _me_. And here he was calling his allies, the spirits and powers of the dark and terrible mountain heights and depths, and openly giving battle. I don't know why it depressed me; I felt as if the very fact that it did was a half surrender; I looked up at him a moment; I forgot who he was; I wished he was as poor as I. But to become the mother of Rhoda, my friend, and of Merivale, that laughing young giant--what absurdity, if all the rest were equal! And that other, the dead woman, the first wife--should one not always be jealous of that sweet early love? Could one endure it? Here among these hills with all their ghostliness she would haunt me. And then I turned and swept away to the fireside, holding out my hands to the flame, and glad to sink into the chair that some one had left empty there.