“Where have they been wandering to?”

My face crimsoned, but I kept silent.

“I would like to know what you were thinking about?” he said, gently.

“A young girl’s foolish fancies would seem very childish to you, after what you have been talking about.”

“Nevertheless, we like sometimes the childish and innocent.  I have a fancy for it just now, Medoline.”

“Please, Mr. Winthrop, I cannot tell you all my thoughts.  They are surely my own, and cannot be torn from me ruthlessly.”

“What sort of persons are you meeting now at your Mill Road Mission?”

He suddenly changed the conversation, to my intense relief.

“The very same that I have met all along, with the exception of the Sykes family—­they are a new experience.”

“Were you thinking of any one you know there just now, that caused your inattention?”

“Why, certainly not, Mr. Winthrop.  I do not care so very much for them as that.”

He was silent for a good while, in one of his abstracted moods; and, thinking the lesson was over for that day, I was about to leave the room.  He arose, and, going to the window, stood looking out into the night—­I quietly watching him, and wondering of what he was so busily thinking.  Presently he turned, and, coming to the table where I was sitting, stood looking down intently at me.

“Medoline, has it ever occurred to you that you are an unusually attractive bit of womanhood?”

I drew back almost as if he had struck me a blow.  He smiled.

“You are as odd as you are fascinating,” he said.

He went to his writing-desk.  I watched him unlock one of the drawers and take out two envelopes.  He came back and stood opposite me at the table.

“I received, a few days ago, a letter from my friend Bovyer, in which he enclosed one for you, which I was at liberty to read.  Probably I should have submitted it to you earlier, but——­”

He did not finish the sentence, and stood quietly while I read the letter.  The hot blood was crimsoning my neck and brow, and, without raising my eyes, I pushed the letter across the table, without speaking.  He handed me another.  A strong impulse seized me to fly from the room, but I had not courage to execute my desire.  The second letter was fully as surprising as the first.  It was from another of Mr. Winthrop’s friends, who had frequented our hotel in New York.  I recalled his face readily, and the impression his manners and conversation had made on my mind.  He had fewer years to boast than Mr. Bovyer, but more good looks.  I finished his letter, and, still holding it in my hand, unconsciously fell to recalling more distinctly my half-forgotten impressions of his personality.  I remembered he could say brilliant things in an off-hand way, as if he were not particularly proud of the fact.  I remembered, too, that he had genuine humor, and had often convulsed me with a merriment I was ashamed to betray; but, strange to say, of all those who had haunted Mr. Winthrop’s parlors in those two weeks, not one had paid me so little attention as this Maurice Graem; and now both he and Mr. Bovyer had written, asking my guardian’s permission to have me as life-long companion and friend.