"Come, Mary, let's drop the baby question, and play chess," said James, impatiently, as we discussed the visitor; "I'm tired of the subject." "Wait until to-morrow, and you will become interested too," she responded. "I like hearty little bread-and-butter girls," said he, "but not such die-away misses as that. She looks to me as if she read Coleridge already. Children should be children, to please me." The repulsion was mutual. I, only, had noticed the strange effect wrought upon my pet by a sight of James, and knowing, as I did, the peculiarities of her temperament, it had astonished me, and aroused my curiosity. By the ill-humor with which he received any allusion to Lenore, I believed that James himself was conscious that the pure eyes of the child looked straight into the darker chambers of his heart, and was frightened by what she saw there. A young man who was gambling away his uncle's property upon the credit of a daughter's hand which he had not yet won, could not have a very easy conscience; and it was not a pleasant thing to be reminded of his delinquencies by the clear eyes of an innocent child. As he became absorbed in his game of chess, I sat studying his countenance, and thinking of many things. I wondered if his uncle and cousins were not aware of the change which was coming over him; that reckless, dissipated look which writes certain wrinkles in a young man's face, overwritten in his by outer smiles, which could not hide the truth from a discerning eye. I asked myself if I could justify my course in keeping silence about what I had seen; it was my plainest duty to inform Mr. Argyll, not only on his account, but on James also. Such a knowledge, coming to his uncle, though it would be terribly mortifying to his nephew, might be the means of breaking his new fetters of habit before they were riveted upon him. Such, I felt, was my duty. At the same time, I shrunk from it, as a person situated as I was naturally would shrink; I was liable to have my motives misconstrued; to have it hinted that self-interest was prompting me to place James in a bad light. No, I couldn't do it! For the hundredth time I came to this conclusion, against the higher voice of the absolute right. I was glad to strengthen myself in my weak course by remembering that Mr. Burton had requested my silence, and that I was not at liberty to betray his confidence. Looking at him, thinking these things, with my thoughts more in my eyes than they ought to have been had I been on my guard, James suddenly looked up and encountered my gaze. He pushed the board aside with an angry motion, which overthrew half the men and entirely disconcerted the game. "Well, how do you like my looks, Richard?" the defiant eyes glittering with a will which overpowered my own, smiling a deadly smile which threatened me. "How peevish you are, James! I believe you threw up the game because you saw I was checkmating you," cried his cousin.