"That seems ages ago," said Barbara, dreamily; "so much has happened since." "So long ago that you don't care to renew the subject?" "I--" But Barbara stopped short. The feeble blaze in the fire-place suddenly went out. Hiram did not know where to begin. He got up and took some dry chips from a basket and threw them on the slumbering coals, so as to set the flame a-going again. Then he sat down in his chair and looked up at the now silent Barbara, and tried in vain to guess her mood. But she remained silent and waited for him to take the lead. "Do you remember what you said then?" he asked. "No! how can I? It seems so long ago." "You said a pack of nonsense." As he blurted out this charge Mason turned his head round obliquely, still regarding Barbara. "Did I? That's just like me," Barbara answered, with a little laugh. "No, it isn't like you," he replied, almost rudely. "You're the most sensible woman I ever knew, except on one subject." "What's that?" Barbara was startled by the vehemence and abruptness of his speech, and she asked this in a half-frightened voice. "Your pride. I looked up to you then, as I do now. You're something above me--I just worship you." To a man of maturity this sort of talk seems extravagant enough. But one must let youth paint itself as it will, with all its follies on its head. You've said sillier things than that in your time, sober reader--you know you have! "I do just worship you, Barbara Grayson," Hiram went on; "but you talked a parcel of fool stuff that night about the superiority of my family, and about your not being able to bear it that my people should look down on you, and--well, a pack of tomfoolery; that's what it was, Barbara, and there's no use of calling it anything else." Barbara was silent. "Now, I'm not going to give you a chance to make any more such speeches. But I want to ask you whether, if I should send you a letter from my mother when I get home, and maybe from my sisters too, after I have told them the whole truth, urging you to accept me and become one of our family--I want to know whether, then, you would be willing; whether you'd take pity on a poor fellow who can't get along without you. Would that suit you?" "No, it wouldn't," said Barbara, looking at the now blazing chips in the fire-place with her head bent forward. "Well, what on earth _would_, then?" And Mason tilted back his chair in the nervousness of desperation and brought his eyes to a focus on her face, which was strangely illuminated in the flickering foot-lights from the hearth. "Did I talk that way last summer?" "Yes, you did." "It must have hurt you. I can see it hurt you, from the way you speak about it." "Yes," said Mason; "I've been in a sort of purgatory ever since." "And I didn't mean to hurt your feelings. I'd rather do anything than to hurt your feelings." Here she paused, unable to proceed at once, but he waited for her to show the way. Presently she went on: