“Isn’t it a delightful home?” said Austin. “So simple, yet it would be hard to find a detail that could be improved.” “There _is_ one, though,” retorted Miss Scott. “Only you can’t see--a mortgage.” The expression of her face, it was as if she had winked, carried full meaning. It worked like a sudden poison. Now Austin understood Hal’s apparently enthusiastic liking for him; now he understood Mrs. Thorburn’s well-veiled wishes and friendly pats upon his arm; now he understood Dorothy, sulky at times, at others over-cordial, in fact, gushing, and always so eloquent of eye. But could he give unquestioning belief to the mere insinuation of a sharp-tongued envious girl? What right had he, on such flimsy evidence, to jump to the conclusion that the Thorburns, mother and son, were cold-blooded bargainers; that Dorothy, in her sweeter moods, was acting a crafty lie? As he walked silently homeward, he was forced to acknowledge to himself that he had not an inkling as to what were the girl’s true inclinations. Her artificial life, and her training under false standards, made it possible for her to mask her real self. If there were no one to influence her, would she seek her happiness with him? His meeting with Vincenza next morning was like a breath of scented air after a stifling room. She did not know of his wealth, she did not parade her beauty, she was not hunting a human bank. If it were a question of what were her feelings, how easily, how unerringly, it could be answered! For what she said came straight from her innocent heart, and could be accepted absolutely. She was truth itself. While they sat together under a broad live-oak, with the turkeys settled down near by in the sun, he listened with keen pleasure to her naïve chatter and to the sturdy announcement that she was going to the city--soon, too, this with a blush, and that even now she was having a “tailor-suit” made for her journey. “A tailor-suit!” thought Austin, almost laughing at the ridiculousness of it. She seemed so fitted to the simple print dress and the broad sun-hat she was wearing. The following day he breakfasted before the others and hurried off eagerly, carrying the gun. He had never fired it yet, but it served as an excellent excuse for his long rambles. When he reached the oak grove on the hillside, he leaned the weapon against a tree. Then he stretched himself out, his soft hat under his head. Vincenza--in the last twenty-four hours, how often the thought of her had come to him! What a contrast this girl of the fields was to Dorothy Thorbum! How winsome, how unaffected. She was a little woman to be prized as a jewel by a fortunate man. How disinterested her companionship with him had been! She liked him solely for himself--with no knowledge, and, therefore, no thought, of the big stone house that would be a veritable palace of fairyland to a girl like her; with no thought of fine raiment, or of luxuries of any sort.