"
"You do not understand my meaning. Will it be the money my father left
me?"
"I cannot promise it will be just the same. No doubt that has passed
through scores of hands since then; in fact, it may be lying in the
bottom of the sea. I did not expect you would be so exact in money
matters, or I might have been more careful."
"Mr. Winthrop, why do you so persistently misconstrue my meaning?" I
said, desperately. He looked down more gently from his superior height
into my troubled face, and the mocking gleam faded from his eyes.
"Why are you so scrupulously, ridiculously insistent in maintaining such
perfect independence? Can you not believe I get well paid for all you
cost me, if we descend to the vulgarity of dollars and cents, in having
a bright, original young creature about the house with a fiery,
independent, nature, ready to fight with her rich friends for the sake
of her poor ones?"
"I wish we could be friendly, Mr. Winthrop," I half sobbed, with an
impulsive gesture stretching out my hands, but remembering myself, as
quickly I drew them back, and without waiting for a reply fled from the
room. Once in the hall I took down my hat from the rack and slipped out
into the night, my pulses throbbing feverishly, and with difficulty
repressing the longing to find relief in a burst of tears. The short
twilight had quite faded away into starlight, but the autumn air was
still warm enough to permit a stroll after nightfall. When I grew calm
enough to notice whither my feet had strayed, I found myself on the Mill
Road.
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