"He really seems to have supplanted ME as he has poor Kearney in your estimation." "Now, father," said Jessie, suddenly seizing him by the shoulders in affected indignation, but really to conceal a certain embarrassment that sprang quite as much from her sister's quietly observant eye as her father's speech, "you promised to let this ridiculous discussion drop.
You will make me and Christie so nervous that we will not dare to open the door to a visitor, until he declares his innocence of any matrimonial intentions.

You don't want to give color to the gossip that agreement with your views about the improvements is necessary to getting on with us." "Who dares talk such rubbish ?" said Carr, reddening; "is that the kind of gossip that Fairfax brings here ?" "Hardly, when it's known that he don't quite agree with you, and DOES come here.

That's the best denial of the gossip." Christie, who had of late loftily ignored these discussions, waited until her father had taken his departure.
"Then that is the reason why you still see Mr.Munroe, after what you said," she remarked quietly to Jessie.
Jessie, who would have liked to escape with her father, was obliged to pause on the threshold of the door, with a pretty assumption of blank forgetfulness in her blue eyes and lifted eyebrows.
"Said what?
when ?" she asked vacantly.
"When--when Mr.Kearney that day--in the woods--went away," said Christie, faintly coloring.
"Oh! THAT day," said Jessie briskly; "the day he just gloved your hand with kisses, and then fled wildly into the forest to conceal his emotion." "The day he behaved very foolishly," said Christie, with reproachful calmness, that did not, however, prevent a suspicion of indignant moisture in her eyes--"when you explained"-- "That it wasn't meant for ME," interrupted Jessie.
"That it was to you that MR.

MUNROE'S attentions were directed.

And then we agreed that it was better to prevent any further advances of this kind by avoiding any familiar relations with either of them." "Yes," said Jessie, "I remember; but you're not confounding my seeing Fairfax occasionally now with that sort of thing.