She began to look upon herself as something very superior
indeed--something far excelling the ordinary run of girls. They
flattered her until she hardly knew what was false and what was true.

She delighted in making pictures of the future; how she was to stoop
from the height of her grandeur to raise him; how her wealth was, as it
were, to crown his genius. They told her that the whole world would
praise her for her noble generosity. That the rich heiress who forgot
her wealth and became the artist's wife, would be honored wherever her
name was known. They intoxicated her with romance, they bewildered her
with flattery. And she was only seventeen, with no mother to speak one
warning word to her.

She pledged herself to be Allan Lyster's wife when she came of age. He
told her he would rather forego all claim to her wealth, marry her at
once, and leave her guardian to act as he thought best; but she, though
delighted to find him free from the least taint of anything mercenary,
refused to run the risk of losing her fortune.

"Would you really," she said to him one day, "love me as much if I were
quite poor, as you do now?"

"Would I! Oh, Marion, what a question to ask me! The only drawback to my
love is that hateful fortune; if it were not for that I would marry you
at once. Ah, you should find out what I loved you for, sweet. I would
work for you night and day. I would move the whole world to find for my
darling that which she would require."

And the girl in her simplicity believed him, and thought herself the