“Certainly I have no objection to receive advice, Miss Marlay; but have you joined the other side?”

“I don’t know what you mean by the other side, Mr. Charlton.  I don’t belong to any side.  I think all quarreling is unpleasant, and I hate it.  I don’t think anything you say makes any change in Uncle Plausaby, while it does make your mother unhappy.”

“So you think, Miss Isabel, that I ought to go away from Wheat County and not throw my influence on the side of right in this contest, because my mother is unhappy?” Albert spoke with some warmth.

“I did not say so.  I think that a useless struggle, which makes your mother unhappy, ought to be given over.  But I didn’t want to advise you about your duty to your mother.  I was led into saying so much on that point.  I came to say something else.  It does seem to me that if you could take Katy with you, something might turn up that would offer you a chance to influence her.  And that would be better than keeping the county-seat at Perritaut.”  And she got up to go in.

Charlton was profoundly touched by Isabel’s interest in Katy.  He rose to his feet and said:  “You are right, I believe.  And I am very, very much obliged.”

And as the straightforward Isa said, “Oh! no, that is nothing,” and walked away, Charlton looked after her and said, “What a charming woman!” He felt more than he said, and he immediately set himself loyally to work to enumerate all the points in which Miss Helen Minorkey was superior to Isa, and said that, after all, gracefulness of form and elasticity of motion and melodiousness of voice were only lower gifts, possessed in a degree by birds and animals, and he blamed himself for feeling them at all, and felt thankful that Helen Minorkey had those higher qualities which would up-lift—­he had read some German, and compounded his words—­up-lift a man to a higher level.  Perhaps every loyal-hearted lover plays these little tricks of self-deception on himself.  Every lover except the one whose “object” is indeed perfect.  You know who that is.  So do I. Indeed, life would be a very poor affair if it were not for these—­what shall I call them?  If Brown knew how much Jones’s wife was superior to his own, Brown would be neither happier nor better for the knowledge.  When he sees the superiority of Mrs. Jones’s temper to Mrs. Brown’s somewhat energetic disposition, he always falls back on Mrs. Brown’s diploma, and plumes himself that at any rate Mrs. Brown graduated at the Hobson Female College.  Poor Mrs. Jones had only a common-school education.  How mortified Jones must feel when he thinks of it!

CHAPTER XII.

AN ADVENTURE.