“She won’t let me comfort her. She has never--never looked upon me as anything but an intruder, and when our poor father dies I shall have to go. It is only right, too, of course. It’s only lately I’ve begun to see and know what a burden I must have been upon them all these years----” “Nonsense, Deb. You may be sure my father--and all of us--never considered you that.” “Of course he didn’t, he is too good,” said the girl, with a caressing tone. “But it’s true, all the same. And you needn’t look like that at me. I shall be glad to earn my own living, and I don’t care how. See, I’ve begun to make my own dresses; I made this one.” With the tears still rolling down her cheeks, she sat upright with some pride. “The back of the bodice looks a little like the waves of the sea in a pantomime,” said Godwin, who was a critic on the subject of woman’s dress. “However, no doubt the intention was better than the sewing.” Then he came to a sudden stop, and presently said, “There’s something else to be thought of when you talk about going away. You know we all want to marry you.” “Rees doesn’t,” burst from her lips. The next moment she hung her head, crimson and confused. But Godwin took this outburst beautifully. “He couldn’t just now, however much he wanted to,” said he, soothingly. “But he will by-and-bye, if he isn’t even a more thundering idiot than I think him,” he added with a burst of irritation. “And if he shouldn’t----” She interrupted him hastily, with a look almost of fear in her eyes, as she put her hand affectionately on his arm. “Look here, Godwin,” she began hurriedly. “I know what you’re going to say; but you mustn’t say it. It’s of no use pretending things to you, for you notice everything. Well, and you know I love Rees, and I’m not ashamed of it--no, not a bit,” she added, raising her blushing face fearlessly to his. “He has faults, I know, but there is enough good in him to love, and I do love him. And if he marries any other girl I shall never marry at all; but if he ever marries me, even if he were to be always cross and cold to me, as he has been lately, and if he were to lose all his handsomeness and brightness, and be miserable, and old, and dull, I should be happier as his wife than as the wife of the best man that ever lived.” “Oh, of course; I don’t doubt it. A good character in a man is a scarecrow which would frighten any woman away.” “You don’t believe me?” “Yes, I do, unfortunately. I always had a secret belief that girls were idiots. Now it’s an open belief. That’s all.” Deborah rose, and leaned over the balustrade, against which Godwin was kicking his heels and knocking off pieces of the mouldering stone. “I can’t help it, Godwin,” she said, with a sigh.