Miss Rochester lifted her expressive eyes with a thrilling, grateful glance. “You are very good,” she responded simply. Then after a moment, as if she had suddenly resolved upon the performance of some difficult duty, she continued, speaking rapidly, though she flushed a vivid crimson. “And, Dr. Winthrop, if you will forgive me for speaking very freely, though I know it will set us both more at ease, I would like to tell you that mamma read the letter you sent to papa this morning, and, as we have no secrets from each other, I also know its contents. Nay, I beg you will not allow the fact to make you uncomfortable,” she interposed, as he flushed and winced, “it is far better that we should clearly understand each other. It was a foolish and arbitrary thing for two men to make such a contract as papa and your uncle made years ago; as if a couple of young people who had never seen each other could assume such sacred relations to gratify a mere whim. Let me thank you for being so frank in your letter, and—and may I not number you among my friends? unless,” she concluded, with a silvery little laugh, that rang like music through the room, “you regard me as an object to be dreaded and shunned.” Dr. Winthrop saw that she understood why he had planned to leave Paris so suddenly, and he thought her charming in her frankness and in so courageously attacking the subject of the contract. Probably she had dreaded the union as much as he, and had gladly welcomed the release which he had been so tardy in tendering her; perhaps she even loved some one else, and would now be free to follow the inclination of her heart. This view of the matter hurt and irritated him a little, and yet he admired her for being so outspoken, and for trying to put him at his ease, when she could not fail to understand the embarrassment of his position. “You are very good, Miss Rochester, to meet me so openly upon this subject, and you do me honor in requesting my friendship, which I assure you is most heartily accorded. I am free to confess that when I met you yesterday, I almost felt myself a cumberer of the ground, as if I was a blot upon the otherwise fair sky of your life,” the young physician concluded, with a deprecatory smile. Again his companion laughed sweetly. “There was no need of such self-condemnation as that, I assure you,” she said, “for you were not to blame—neither of us is to blame because our natures recoil from obedience to the arbitrary wishes of our friends. But,” with a roguish glance, “if you feel uncomfortable about remaining to treat mamma, on my account, I promise you you shall not once set eyes upon me—you shall not have cause to know that I am in Paris.” He knew that she did not mean it, yet it told him how cleverly she had read his feelings.