“Oh, yes, very fortunate,” said Molly, but it distressed him to notice that her tone was distinctly sarcastic, and that she clinched her little fists again as if in a secret fury. “I suppose,” he went on, excitedly, “that the girl is envious of your good fortune, hence her disagreeable letter to you.” “Of course,” agreed Molly. “Do not let her rancor trouble you. She is beneath the notice of a Barry. Her spleen is not worth paying back,” Cecil said. “Oh, yes, it is, and I propose to pay her interest on the debt,” she replied, angrily, and for the present he saw that it would be useless to oppose her will. He decided to humor her whim. “By all means pay her back then, and perhaps I can help you with the interest,” he said, lightly. “Thank you; I was counting on your assistance,” she replied, with a strange smile, and in a tone of decided earnest. The dark eyes met his with a look of triumph he could not understand. “What can I do to help you to your vengeance?” he asked, but she shook her head and made no reply. CHAPTER XI. Days came and went, and Cecil Laurens was a daily visitor at Ferndale, filled with the laudable desire to please his old friend, Mrs. Barry, by making time pass pleasantly for her niece. At least, that was the reason he assigned to himself when he set out every morning for a canter with Molly over the rough mountain roads, in the golden June weather. If any one had told him that he was taking an unusual interest in the madcap girl whose acquaintance he had made in such a ludicrous manner, he would have been indignant at the imputation. He would have told you, as his family and friends said of him, that he was not susceptible, not a marrying man. In his thirty years of life he had met many beautiful and charming women, had “Knelt at many a shrine, Yet laid the heart on none.” So little had he cared for women that he had not, as many men have done, created an ideal woman in his mind; but if he had done so, she would not have resembled Molly Trueheart in the least; she would have been full of gracious ease and dignity: “A perfect creature, nobly planned, To warn, to comfort, and command, And yet a spirit still and bright, With something of an angel’s light.” Molly Trueheart did not come up to this ideal at all. She was a merry, willful little maid, reminding one of April weather with her alternations from frowns to smiles, and from laughter to tears. Cecil Laurens never suspected her of a bit of sentiment until one day when he came upon her unexpectedly, and found her reading Mrs. Browning with the page open at “Lady Geraldine’s Courtship.” “You read poetry, then? I am surprised,” he said. Molly left her finger between the pages and looked up at him without a trace of surprise at his sudden coming. Perhaps she had seen or heard him. “You are surprised--why? Did you think I could not read?” she inquired flippantly.