What poor girl in Vineville have you left pining ?" The simple face of the man before her flushed with foolish gratification at this old-fashioned, ambiguous flattery.

"Now look yer, Belle," he said, chuckling, "if you're talking of old times and you think I bear malice agin Spencer, why--" But Mrs.Tucker interrupted what might have been an inopportune sentimental retrospect with a finger of arch but languid warning.

"That will do! I'm dying to know all about it, and you must stay to dinner and tell me.

It's right mean you can't see Spencer too; but he isn't back from Sacramento yet." Grateful as a tete-a-tete with his old neighbor in her more prosperous surroundings would have been, if only for the sake of later gossiping about it, he felt it would be inconsistent with his pride and his assumption of present business.

More than that, he was uneasily conscious that in Mrs.Tucker's simple and unaffected manner there was a greater superiority than he had ever noticed during their previous acquaintance.