it. Shorn lamb, forsooth! We, or rather you, madame, ma mere, will
be shorn--thoroughly fleeced! Pious! Ha! ha! ha!"

Here followed an earnest expostulation from Mrs. Murray, only a few
words of which were audible, and once more the deep, strong, bitter
tones rejoined:

"Interfere! Pardon me, I am only too happy to stand aloof and watch
the little wretch play out her game. Most certainly it is your own
affair, but you will permit me to be amused, will you not? And with
your accustomed suavity forgive me, if I chance inadvertently to
whisper above my breath, 'Le jeu n'en vaut pas la chandelle?' What
the deuce do you suppose I care about her 'faith?' She may run
through the whole catalogue from the mustard-seed size up, as far as
I am concerned, and you may make yourself easy on the score of my
'contaminating' the sanctified vagrant!"

"St. Elmo! my son! promise me that you will not scoff and sneer at
her religion; at least in her presence," pleaded the mother.

A ringing, mirthless laugh was the only reply that reached the girl,
as she put her fingers in her ears and hid her face on the window-
sill.

It was no longer possible to doubt the identity of the stranger; the
initials on the fly-leaf meant St. Elmo Murray; and she knew that in
the son of her friend and protectress, she had found the owner of
her Dante and the man who had cursed her grandfather for his
tardiness. If she had only known this one hour earlier, she would
have declined the offer, which once accepted, she knew not how to