"Oh, no!" sighed Mrs. Burton, with a break from her cheerfulness with Cornelia, which set its voluntary character in evidence to the girl's keen, young perception. "But he seemed to be rather discouraged about the prospects of artists when he wrote." She was afraid Cornelia might ask her when he had written. "He seemed to think the ranks were very full. He's a very changeable person. He's always talked, before now, about there being plenty of room at the top." "Well, that's where I expect to be," said the girl, smiling but trembling. She turned the talk, and soon rose to go, ignoring to the last Mrs. Burton's forced efforts to recur to her plan of studying art in New York. Now she said: "Mrs. Burton, there's one thing I'd like to ask you," and she lifted her eyes upon her with a suddenness that almost made Mrs. Burton jump. "What is it, Nelie?" "You've always been so good to me--and--and taken such an interest, that I'm afraid--I thought you might try--I want you to promise me you won't write to Mr. Ludlow about me, or ask him to do the least thing, for me!" "I won't, I won't indeed, Nelie!" Mrs. Burton promised with grateful perfervor. "Because," said the girl, taking her skirt in her left hand, preparatory to lifting it for her descent of the piazza steps, "now that I've made up my mind, I don't want to be discouraged, and I don't want to be helped. If I can't do for myself, I won't be done _for_." After she got down through the maples, and well out of the gate, Burton came and stood in the hall door-way, with his pipe in his mouth. "Saved your distance, Polly, as usual; saved your distance." "What would _you_ have done?" retorted his wife. "I should have told her that I'd just got a letter from Ludlow this morning, and that he begged and entreated me by everything I held dear, to keep the poor girl from coming to New York, and throwing away her time and health and money." "You wouldn't!" cried Mrs. Burton. "You wouldn't have done anything of the kind. It would have made her perfectly hate him." Burton found his pipe out. He lighted a match and hollowed his hands over it above the pipe, to keep it from the draught. "Well," he said, avoiding the point in controversy, "why _shouldn't_ she perfectly hate him?" IX.