Ignoring his feeble protest, she continued: "My papa was English, but he was not of what you call gentle birth, Captain Lancaster. He was the son of a most unlucky tradesman who died and left him nothing but his blessing. So papa ran away to America at barely twenty-one. He went to California to seek his fortune, and he had some good luck and some bad. When he had been there a year he found a gold nugget that was quite a fortune to him. So he married then, and when I was born my pretty young mamma died. After that he lived only for me. We had many ups and downs--all miners have--sometimes we were quite rich, sometimes very poor. But I have been what you call well educated. I know Latin and French and German, and I have studied music. In America, I can move in quite good society, but in your country--" she paused and fixed her clear, grave eyes on his face. "Well?" he said. "In England," she said, "I shall, doubtless, be relegated to the same position in society as my aunt, the housekeeper at Lancaster Park. Is it not so?" He was obliged to confess that it was true. "Then is it likely I shall love England?" she said. "No; I am quite too American for that. Oh, I dare say you are disgusted at me, Captain Lancaster. You are proud of your descent from a long line of proud ancestry." She looked down at her book and read on, aloud: "'I know you're proud to bear your name, Your pride is yet no mate for mine, Too proud to care from whence I came.'" He knew the verse by heart. Some impulse stronger than his will or reason prompted him to repeat the last two lines, meaningly, gazing straight into the sparkling, dark-gray eyes with his proud, blue ones: "'A simple maiden in her flower Is worth a hundred coats of arms.'" The gray eyes, brave as they were, could not bear the meaning gaze of the blue ones. They wavered and fell. The long lashes drooped against the cheeks that flushed rosy red. She shut up the book with an impatient sigh, and said, with an effort at self-possession: "You shall see that I will bring my aunt home to America with me, Captain Lancaster." "Perhaps so; and yet I think she loves England--as much, I dare say, as you do America." "I hope not, for what should we do in that case? I have only her, she has only me, and why should we live apart?" "Do you mean to tell me that you have left behind you no relatives?" he said. "I told you I had no one but Aunt West," she said, almost curtly. "And she can scarcely be called your relative. I believe she was only your father's sister-in-law," he said. "That is true," she replied. "Then why go to her at all, since the kinship is but in name, and you would be happier in America?" he asked, with something of curiosity. "Papa wished it," she replied, simply. Then there was a brief silence. Leonora's lashes drooped, with the dew of unshed tears on them. The young face looked very sad in the soft evening light.