Her lip trembled and she set her teeth into it.

“You might at least allow me to forget it,” she retorted.

“Why should you wish to forget it?  I think I shall be proud of it when I have risen far enough above it to claim you.  It is no small thing to be a self-made man.”

She resented the assurance of his tone.

“It is strange that you do not consider my view of it.”

“Your view—­what is it?”

“That I do not wish the man I love to—­to speak to that Pollard girl,” she gasped.

“Since you wish it, I will avoid her in future.  She is nothing to me; but I can’t refuse to speak to her.  You are unreasonable.”

She was regarding the hovering shade of Amos Burr.

“If you think me unreasonable,” she returned, “we may as well—­”

He reached her side by a single step and flung his arm about her.  Then he looked into her face and laughed softly.

“May as well what—­dearest?” he asked.

She shook an obstinate head.

“You don’t love me,” was her inevitable feminine challenge.

He laughed again.  “Do I love you?” he demanded as he looked at her.

She did not answer, but the shade of Amos Burr melted afar.

Nicholas bent over her with abrupt intensity and kissed her lips until his kisses hurt her.

“Do I love you—­now?” he asked.

“Yes—­yes—­yes.”  She freed herself with a laugh that dispelled the lingering cloud.  “You may convince me next time without violence,” she affirmed radiantly.

As he watched her his large nostrils twitched whimsically.  “You were saying that we might as well—­”

“Go home to supper,” she finished triumphantly.  “The sun has set.”

When she left him a little later at the end of the avenue she flew joyously up the narrow walk.  She was softly humming to herself, and as she stepped upon the porch the song ran lightly into words.

  “I love Love, though he has wings,
    And like light can flee—­”

she sang, and paused within the shadow of the porch to glance through the long window that led into the sitting-room.  The heavy curtains obstructed her gaze, and she had put up her hand to push them aside, when her father’s voice reached her, and at his words her outstretched arm fell slowly to her side.

“It’s that girl of Jerry Pollard’s,” he was saying.  “She’s gotten into trouble, and that Burr boy’s mixed up in it; the young rascal!”

Miss Chris’s placid voice floated in.

“I can’t believe it,” she charitably murmured; and Bernard, who was on the hearth rug, turned at the sound.

“It’s all gossip, you know,” he said.

Eugenia pushed aside the curtains and stepped into the room.  Her hands hung at her sides, and the animation had faded from her glance.  Her face looked white and drawn.

“It is not true,” she said steadily.  “Papa, it is not true.”