prettiest girls were Ethiopian in complexion, and sat, apparently, on each other’s heads and shoulders.  His fingers had turned listlessly the leaves of school-catalogues, the Sermons of Dr. Crammer, the poems of Henry Kirke White, the lays of the Sanctuary and lives of celebrated women.  His fancy, and it was a nervously active one, had gone over the partings and greetings that must have taken place here, and wondered why the apartment had yet caught so little of the flavor of humanity; indeed, I am afraid he had almost forgotten the object of his visit when the door opened, and Carry Tretherick stood before him.

It was one of those faces he had seen the night before, prettier even than it had seemed then; and yet I think he was conscious of some disappointment, without knowing exactly why.  Her abundant waving hair was of a guinea-golden tint, her complexion of a peculiar flowerlike delicacy, her brown eyes of the color of seaweed in deep water.  It certainly was not her beauty that disappointed him.

Without possessing his sensitiveness to impression, Carry was, on her part, quite as vaguely ill at ease.  She saw before her one of those men whom the sex would vaguely generalize as “nice,” that is to say, correct in all the superficial appointments of style, dress, manners, and feature.  Yet there was a decidedly unconventional quality about him:  he was totally unlike anything or anybody that she could remember; and as the attributes of originality are often as apt to alarm as to attract people, she was not entirely prepossessed in his favor.

“I can hardly hope,” he began pleasantly, “that you remember me.  It is eleven years ago, and you were a very little girl.  I am afraid I cannot even claim to have enjoyed that familiarity that might exist between a child of six and a young man of twenty-one.  I don’t think I was fond of children.  But I knew your mother very well.  I was editor of the Avalanche in Fiddletown when she took you to San Francisco.”

“You mean my stepmother; she wasn’t my mother, you know,” interposed Carry hastily.

Mr. Prince looked at her curiously.  “I mean your stepmother,” he said gravely.  “I never had the pleasure of meeting your mother.”

“No; mother hasn’t been in California these twelve years.”

There was an intentional emphasizing of the title and of its distinction that began to interest coldly Prince after his first astonishment was past.

“As I come from your stepmother now,” he went on with a slight laugh, “I must ask you to go back for a few moments to that point.  After your father’s death, your mother—­I mean your stepmother—­recognized the fact that your mother, the first Mrs. Tretherick, was legally and morally your guardian and, although much against her inclination and affections, placed you again in her charge.”

“My stepmother married again within a month after father died, and sent me home,” said Carry with great directness, and the faintest toss of her head.