“Don’t talk of him. I can’t bear it yet. Talk of something else, please,” she said, and Roy plunged at once into the object of his visit, reminding her that he had his diploma and his mustache, and now he wanted her love. “Oh, Roy, it’s too bad in you to spoil our good times as friends. As lovers we might quarrel, and then we are cousins,” she said. “Only seconds, which does not count,” Roy answered, moving nearer to her, while she put another cushion between them so that only her shoulders and head were visible. Roy was of a more ardent nature than his father, and there was no stiffness or hesitancy in his wooing when once he was fairly under way. “You can pile up the cushions till I can’t see you at all,” he said, “but it will not prevent you from hearing me tell you that I love you and have ever since I saw you in short dresses, with your hair down your back.” For a time Fanny listened with her face bent down, and when she turned it to him there was a troubled look upon it and her lips quivered as she said, “I do care for you, Roy, and always have; but I must not any more. You will not want me to either when you know what I do.” “What do you know?” he asked, beginning to slide his hand under the cushions. “Have you never heard anything bad about me or mother?” she asked, and Roy answered, with so sudden a movement that one of the cushions fell to the floor. “Bad about you, or your mother? Never. I would have thrashed any one who insinuated anything against you. What do you mean?” “I am not Fanny Prescott,” the girl said with a sob in her voice. “The deuce you are not! Who are you, then, if you are not your father’s daughter?” Roy asked, and Fanny replied, “I am my father’s daughter, but my father was not Judge Prescott, as I thought. I never knew it till he died last May. Mother had to tell me then on account of some business matters and it almost broke my heart, I was so fond of him and so proud of being his daughter and he was so kind to me. I held his hand when he died and kissed him and called him father and didn’t suspect the truth. I don’t think you will care for me when you know all. I have always heard the Masons were very proud.” “And I have always heard the Tracys were very proud. Greek meeting Greek, you see,” Roy rejoined. “But go ahead. Let’s hear the story. Nothing can ever change my love for you. Who are you? Who was your father?”