He moved a trifle uneasily in his chair. He had not meant to speak aloud. “An unintentional outburst, Mollie,” he said. “A cheerful state of affairs, that.” “What state of affairs?” she inquired. “Oh, you mean Dolly's engagement. Well, of course, it _has_ been a long one; but then, you see, they like each other very much. Aimée was only saying this afternoon that they cared for each other more now than they did at first.” “Do they?” said Gowan, and for the time being lapsed into silence. “It's a cross-grained sort of fortune that seems to control us in this world, Mollie,” he said, at length. Mollie stared at the poor little daub on her hand-screen and met his philosophy indifferently enough. “_You_ ought n't to say so,” she answered. “And I don't know anything about it.” He laughed--quite savagely for so amiable a young man. “I!” he repeated. “I ought not to say so, ought n't I? I think I ought. It _is_ a cross-grained fortune, Mollie. We are always falling in love with people who do not care for us, or with people who care for some one else, or with people who are too poor to marry us, or--” “Speak for yourself,” said Mollie, with a vigor quite wonderful and new in her. “_I_ am not.” And she held her screen up between her face and his, so that he could not see her. She could have burst into a passionate gush of tears. It was Dolly he was thinking about,--it was Dolly who had the power to make him unhappy and sardonic,--always Dolly. “Then you are a wise child, Mollie,” he said. “But you are a very young child yet,--only seventeen, is n't it? Well, it may all come in good time.” “It will not come at all,” she asserted, stubbornly. Dolly's little wretch of a hand-screen was quite trembling in her hand, it made her so desperate to feel, as she did, that she was of such small consequence to him that he could treat her as a child, and make a sort of joke of his confidence. But he did not see it. “Ah! well, you see,” he went on, “I thought so once, but it has come to me nevertheless. The fact is, I am crying for the moon, Mollie, as many a wiser and better man has done before me.” She did not answer, so he rose and walked once or twice across the room. When he came back to the fire, she had risen too, and was standing up, biting the edge of her screen, all flushed, and with a brightness in her eyes he did not understand. Poor little soul! she was suffering very sharply in her childish way. He laid a hand on either of her shoulders, and spoke to her gently enough. “Mollie,” he said, “let us sit down together and condole with each other. You are not in a good humor to-night, something has rasped you again; and as for me, I am about as miserable, my dear, as it is possible for a man with a few thousand a year to be.” She tried to answer him steadily, and, finding she could not, rushed into novel subterfuge. Subterfuge was a novelty to Mollie.