“My father is dead,” answered the girl, with a flush about her drooping eyelids, under which quick tears were springing. “Dead? But your mother?” “She is living.” “Ah! But you have other relatives—brothers, sisters, perhaps?” “Yes, I have a brother and one sister.” “Like you? Is she beautiful like you?” “I do not suppose any one could think of me, looking at her,” answered Eva, speaking her honest conviction. “I should like to see your sister and your mother,” said the man, “Might I? Would it be unpardonable if I called on them?” “I do not know, we have seen few people since my father was killed.” “Killed, did you say? Killed?” “Yes,” answered Eva, almost in a whisper; “my father was shot down in the street by a man he was arresting.” “Shot down! That was terrible! Forgive me, young lady, if I have made you cry. Nothing was further from my thoughts.” CHAPTER VIII. TRYING THINGS ON. The stout woman who had brought on this conversation came up now, her face beaming with curiosity and her dress fluttering ludicrously. “Well Herman, don’t you think I have been kept waiting about long enough? One gets out of patience, Miss, especially when one is used to being studied and waited on by no end of servants, and such like. Now, if you’ll just look out of the window, you’ll find my footman watching the front entrance like a cat, with one hand on the carriage-door; for he knows well enough there’d be a high breeze if I was kept waiting a single minute; so you mustn’t wonder if I am just a trifle hard on shop girls—I always keep them on the jump.” “Oh, I am quite ready to wait on you,” said Eva smiling. Mrs. Carter smiled also, for her genial nature was always ready to meet cordiality half way, and she said blandly. “Would you mind just stepping over among the lace shawls, they tell me you’re hired to show such things off, and I might take one, if they’ve got something a little superber than the shawl Mrs. Lambert just brought home from Europe. She sits right before me in church, you know, and wears it in the most aggravating way. Every time I kneel down, that eternal pattern of morning-glory vines, creeping over her shoulder, is before my eyes, daring me to get anything like it, if I can, for love or money. I’m expected to feel meek and humble all the same. It isn’t in human nature. That woman and I can’t be members of the same church if she keeps this thing up. One’s moral character won’t stand such strains; kneeling at the same altar with a woman who wears a fifteen hundred dollar lace shawl, and mine only a thousand, and Carter fairly wallowing in greenbacks, is more than I can stand.” Eva listened till her amused smile deepened into a laugh, which the man heard with a thrill of pain that ran through him like an arrow. Tilled with recollections that made his blood stir like old wine in his heart, he drew back and watched the girl narrowly, as she conversed with his sister.