Wasn't he kind ?" said Jenny, who all the evening had been trying for a chance to thank George, but now when she attempted to do so he prevented her by saying, "Oh don't--don't--I can imagine all you wish to say, and I hate to be thanked.

Rose and I are particular friends, and it afforded me a great deal of pleasure to purchase it for her--but," he added, glancing at his watch, "I must be excused now, as I promised to call upon my ward." "Who's that ?" asked Jenny, and George replied that it was a Miss Herndon, who had accompanied him from New Orleans to visit her aunt, Mrs.Russell.
"He says she's an heiress, and very beautiful," rejoined Ida, seating herself at the piano.
Instantly catching at the words "heiress" and "beautiful," Henry started up, asking "if it would be against all the rules of propriety for him to call upon her thus early." "I think it would," was George's brief answer, while Mary's eyes flashed scornfully upon the young man, who, rather crestfallen, announced himself ready to listen to Ida whom he secretly styled "an old maid," because since his first remembrance she had treated him with perfect indifference.
That night before retiring the three girls sat down by the cheerful fire in Mary's room to talk over the events of the day, when Mary suddenly asked Ida to tell her truly, if it were not George who had paid her bills at Mount Holyoke.
"What bills ?" said Jenny, to whom the idea was new while Ida replied, "And suppose it was ?" "I am sorry," answered Mary, laying her head upon the table.
"What a silly girl," said Ida.

"He was perfectly able, and more than willing, so why do you care ?" "I do not like being so much indebted to any one," was Mary's reply, and yet in her secret heart there was a strange feeling of pleasure in the idea that George had thus cared for her, for would he have done so, if--.

She dared not finish that question even to herself,--dared not ask if she hoped that George Moreland loved her one half as well as she began to think she had always loved him.

Why should he, with his handsome person and princely fortune, love one so unworthy, and so much beneath him?
And then, for the first time, she thought of her changed position since last they met.