“And why poor Bob?” she objected lightly; “it seems to me the greatest good fortune.” “Does it?” Fox looked down at the creek musingly; “and yet I say, ‘poor Bob.’” She colored, scarcely conscious of the cause of her blush, unless Fox’s dreamy sympathy for Allestree touched a responsive chord in her own bosom when she remembered how lightly she had thought of him and his unspoken but candid devotion to her; a little thing, a word, a gesture reproached her with ingratitude, for how easily she had passed over all those years and forgotten Allestree in the charm of his cousin’s presence! Then she remembered all the stories she had heard of Fox’s love for Margaret Ward before she married White; steadily as she had tried to forget them, to cease to think of his past where it touched another woman’s life, the stories suddenly took tangible shape and it seemed to her that Margaret was concerned with his existence and she--a mere intruder. Rose, whose heart had been hitherto as untouched as a child’s, shrank with infinite shyness and reluctance from those old dead leaves of passion which had never yet sullied the whiteness of her soul. Some intuition, perhaps, of her feeling warned him, for he began to tell her stories of his boyhood and gradually spoke of his home, his dead mother, his father who had been a distinguished jurist, and so, little by little, won her from her mood. His gentleness, his kindling speech, the tenderness of his eyes thrilled her again with that wonderful attraction which was part of the man’s genius and which even his enemies found incontrovertible. He told her of his mother’s gentleness, her profound religion, her meekness compared with his father’s fierce severity, an Old Testament Christian who beat his boys if they did not go to church three times on Sunday and also to meeting on Thursday nights. “And out of that home I grew up a heathen and a publican,” he said with a smile. Rose looked steadily before her; far off the road dwindled, and she saw Sandy racing a squirrel to a tree. “How can you?” she said at last, in a low voice. “Confess it?” He leaned forward and touched her hand; “will you convert me?” She looked up, their eyes met with the shock of sudden feeling. Her lip trembled like a child’s. “I’m not wise enough,” she replied simply; “you would end by laughing at me!” His face sobered. “Am I so utterly unworthy?” he demanded.