"No difference that matters. It's all in the clothes and the sillier things they talk about. Why, I'd rather hear old Adam Doolittle talk than that stupid Judge Grayson, who dined with us the other night, and never mentioned anything but stocks. If I've got to hear about a single subject I'd rather it would be crops than stocks--they seem more human, somehow." "By Jove!" he exclaimed, under his breath, "what's got into you to-night, Molly? I honestly believe you've begun to idealize the miller now you've been away from him. He's a handsome fellow; you don't see his physical match in a day, I'm willing to admit, but if you went back again you'd be surprised to find how--well, how rustic he would appear to you." The colour rushed to her face, and her eyes burned hot under the sudden droop of her lashes. "He's better than any one I've seen anywhere," she replied, "he's bigger, he's stronger, he's kinder. I'm not good enough to marry him, and I know it." For an instant he looked at her in the pained surprise of one who had never indulged in verbal excesses. Then he said, coldly; "So you're working yourself into a sentiment over young Revercomb. My dear child, if you only knew how unspeakably silly it is. Nothing could be more absurd than to throw away an income of ten thousand dollars a year in order to marry a poor man." The idea of her committing such folly was intensely distressing to him. His judgment was now in the ascendant, and like most men, while under the cool and firm control of the rational part of his nature, he was incapable of recalling with any sympathy the times when he had followed the lead of those qualities which rise superior to reason. "I don't care how poor he is," said Molly passionately, for her rational part was plainly not in the ascendant. "Nobody ever thought about his being so poor until your uncle left me all that horrid money. He was honestly born and I wasn't, yet he didn't care. He was big and splendid and I was little and mean, that was the matter!" "By George, you're in love with him!" he exclaimed, and beneath the coldness of his manner, his heart suffered an incomprehensible pang. Undoubtedly he had permitted himself to drift into a feeling for Molly, which, had he been wise, he would have strangled speedily in the beginning. The obstacles which had appeared to make for his safety, had, he realized now, merely afforded shelter to the flame until it had grown strong enough to overleap them. While he stood there, with his angry gaze on her flushing and paling beauty, he had the helpless sensation of a man who returns at sunrise to find a forest fire raging where he had left a few sticks smouldering at midnight. "I'm not in love with anybody--you've no right to say so," she returned, "but I'll not have him abused. It's not true, it's not just, it's not generous."