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“Of course there was danger, Annette; but that doesn’t remove the fact that I was a hot-headed idiot.”

“You mustn’t talk so. It is not polite to me. I am not going to marry an idiot.”

“But you’ve promised.”

The young people laughed into each other’s eyes.

“Frederick,” said the young girl, after a little silence, during which they drifted into the rigid plush embrace of a sofa, “I’m going up to see that girl and thank her.”

The young man leaned forward and caught her wrists.

“You–angel!”

“Yes, I’m going to-morrow. Of course you can’t go.”

“Oh, good Lord, no,” groaned her lover.

“But papa can. There will be plenty of time; we don’t leave until evening. And in spite of what her father did, I feel kindly toward the girl. There must be some good in her; she seemed to want to do you justice. How does she look, Frederick?”

The soft-voiced inquisitor drew her wrists from the young fellow’s grasp, and flattened his palms between hers by way of an anaesthetic.

“Did you ever see her?”

“Oh, yes, once or twice. A lank, forlorn, little red-headed thing,–rather pretty. Oh, my God, Annette!”

The girl raised the tips of his imprisoned fingers to her lips.

“Couldn’t you send her something, Frederick, some little keepsake, something she would like, if she would like anything that wasn’t too dreadful?”

The young fellow’s face brightened.

“Annette, you are an angel.”

“No, I’m not; there are no brunette angels. I am a very practical young woman, and I’m going with you to buy something for that poor girl; men don’t know how to buy things.” She dropped her lover’s hands, and went out of the room, returning with her hat and gloves, and, going to her father’s side, she said: “Papa, Frederick and I are going out for awhile. He wants to get a little present for a poor young girl, the daughter of that awful wretch who–that–you know. It seems she saw it all, and came down to say that Frederick was not to blame. Of course it was unnecessary, for the judge and every one saw at once that he did perfectly right; but it was kind of her, and it was a very hot day. Do you mind staying here alone?–or you can go with us, if you like.”

“No, thank you; I don’t mind, and I don’t like,” said the elderly gentleman dryly.

“And you’ll not be lonely?”

“No, I think not; I’ve been getting acquainted with myself this trip, and I find I’m a very interesting though somewhat unappreciated old party.”

The young girl put down her laughing face, and her father swept a kiss from it with his gray mustache. Then the two young creatures went out into the lighted streets, laughing and clinging to each other in the sweet, selfish happiness that is the preface to so large a part of the world’s misery.

They came back presently with their purchase, a somewhat obtrusively ornate piece of jewelry, which Annette pronounced semi-barbarous; being, she said, a compromise between her own severely classical taste and that of Sterling, which latter, she assured her father, was entirely savage.

She fastened the trinket at her throat, where it acquired a sudden and hitherto unsuspected elegance in the eyes of her lover, and then unclasped it, and held it at arm’s-length in front of her before she laid it in its pink cotton receptacle.

“I do hope she will be pleased, Frederick,” she said, with a soft, contented little sigh.

And the young man set his teeth, and smiled at her from the depths of a self-abasement that made her content a marvel to him.

Annette went up to the mountains with her father the next day, stopping the carriage under the pepper-trees in front of the Withrow cabin, and stepping out a little bewildered by the meanness and poverty and squalor of it all.

The children came out and stood in a jagged, uneven row before her, and the hounds sniffed at her skirts and walked around her curiously. Mrs. Sproul appeared in the doorway with the baby, shielding its bald head from the sun with her husband’s hat, and Lysander emerged from between two dark green rows of orange-trees across the way, his hoe on his shoulder.