Inez’s face was a very changeable one, now grave and serious and sad, then sunny and sweet, with a smile which changed its whole expression. Like most communicative people she was very inquisitive, and having told all there was to tell about herself she asked Fanny about herself, her home in New York, and how old she was. “I am seventeen,” she said. “And I am twenty. I thought you older,” Fanny replied, in some surprise. “So does every one, because I am so tall and big, like my father. Where is _your_ father?” Inez asked. “He is dead,” Fanny replied, thinking of both Mark Hilton and Judge Prescott. “Oh, I am so sorry for you; but you have a mother, and mine is lying among the hills,” Inez said, beginning to talk again of her home and her hope that Fanny would visit her when she came to the valley. “You _must_,” she continued. “I want you to see our cottage and mother’s grave, and father and Nero and everything. If you will let me see your mother I will ask her for you. People nearly always do what I wish them to.” Fanny could not promise for her mother. To her Inez was a frank, simple-hearted girl, a little too forward, perhaps, but this came of her surrounding circumstances and not from any innate ill-breeding. Mrs. Prescott would probably think differently. “Mother is something of an invalid and does not usually see strangers, but I will tell her of you,” Fanny said, and as a maid just then came to say lunch was ready she bade her good morning and left the parlor. The acquaintance thus begun ripened into intimacy as the days went by, and the two girls saw each other often. Mistress and maid, a casual observer might have thought them, they were so unlike; the one, slight and fair as a lily and clad in garments of the latest style, with every mark of culture and refinement; the other, tall and strongly built, with a freedom of manner which betokened a child of the mountains rather than of the city, and a face singular in its beauty, and eyes wonderful in their varying expression, from a softness under their veiled lids, amounting almost to sleepiness, to gleams of passion which told of a strong nature which, when aroused, was equal to acts of daring from which Fanny in her timidity would have shrunk appalled. Inez took Fanny on frequent walks through the city which she knew so well and where so many seemed to know her. At first Mrs. Prescott objected to her daughter’s intimacy with one who, in her estimation, was little more than a peasant girl. But Fanny was not to be shaken from her allegiance, and after some inquiries of the housekeeper with regard to Inez Mrs. Prescott ceased to object to Fanny’s being so much with her. “But don’t bring her in here. Why should I see her?” she said, when Fanny asked that Inez might be presented. “Because I want you know her, and see if you can tell what makes me feel so when I am with her.”