"She is not my sister!" interrupted Milly wrathfully. "Iris Link is the daughter of my father's second wife; she is no kin of mine, and has no right to domineer over me like she does. I tell you I am thoroughly miserable at home!" cried Miss Lester with a stamp of her foot; "and I marry Darcy Herne to get away from Poverty Villa." "Will you be any happier with Herne?" "Why not? I shall have position and money and society." "Pardon me," contradicted Lovel, "but you will have none of the three. Herne is as mad as a March hare, with his aspirations for a higher life, and his socialistic ideas that all are equal? Position! He gave that up long ago. Money! Well, he has money, but it will be spent in charity--not in pandering to your vanity. Society! Oh, yes! the society of the halt, the lame, the blind, and the religious! That's the set you'll move in. I tell you, Milly," cried Lovel vehemently, "that Herne does not love you; he loves no one and nothing but his mission, as he calls it. He marries you simply to experiment on you--to lead you into the narrow path, no doubt." "I know all you tell me," rejoined Milly, coolly, "but I'll alter Darcy's conduct when I am Mrs. Herne!" "I rather think he'll alter yours, my dear. Now, if you marry me----" "Yes!" interrupted Milly, disdainfully; "if I marry you, what then?" "You would be happy," finished Lovel, turning red. Milly laughed and shrugged her shoulders. "Really, Mr. Lovel, you have a good opinion of yourself! I have known you eight months as a painter, but beyond that I am ignorant. Who are you?" "A painter--an artist, as you say," said the young man, sulkily. "Are you rich?" "No; I have two hundred a year." "As if we could marry on that!" scoffed Milly. "Are your parents alive?" "No. I don't know anything about my parents. I have been an orphan ever since I can remember." "Oh! So you have no money, no position, and--so far as I can see--no name; only your good looks, Mr. Lovel; and on these you wish to marry me. No, thank you, Mr. Egotist," sneered Miss Lester, with a curtsey. "I prefer to marry the squire of Barnstead." Lovel was goaded into a retort. "You'll never marry him," he said, sharply, "if Gran Jimboy is to be believed." "How horrid of you to talk like that, just when I was trying to forget what that old wretch said! Lucas"--she said the name with a glint of terror in her blue eyes--"do you believe in palmistry?" "No," he responded, indifferently--"no more than I believe in Fate." "But Gran Jimboy said that I should be killed--murdered!" Lovel looked at her, and laughed in an ugly manner. "As to that, my dear girl," he said with a sneer, "I hope it may be true. I would rather see you dead than the wife of Squire Herne!" "You cruel wretch!" cried Milly, vehemently. "Why--why?" "In the first place, because I love you; in the second, because Herne, the Apostle of the Higher Culture, is an unprincipled blackguard!" "Darcy! Mr. Herne!"