“Why didn’t he send you to his people?  Hadn’t he sisters?—­or anything like that.”

“He tried to, but they wouldn’t have anything to do with me.”

It was clearly a relief to her to talk about herself.  He guessed that she rarely had an opportunity of opening her heart to any one.  Not till this morning had he seen her in the full light of day; and, though but an immature judge, he fancied her features had settled themselves into lines of reserve and pride from which in happier circumstances they might have been free.  Her way of twisting her dark hair—­which waved over the brows from a central parting—­into the simplest kind of knot gave her an air of sedateness beyond her years.  But what he noticed in her particularly was her eyes—­not so much because they were wild, dark eyes, with the peculiar fleeing expression of startled forest things, as because of the pleading, apologetic look that comes into the eyes of forest things when they stand at bay.  It was when—­for seconds only—­the pupils shone with a jet-like blaze that he caught what he called the non-Aryan effect; but that glow died out quickly, leaving something of the fugitive appeal which Hawthorne saw in the eyes of Beatrice Cenci.

“He offered his sisters a great deal of money,” she sighed, “but they wouldn’t take me.”

“Oh?  So he had money?”

“He was one of the first Americans to make money in the Canadian northwest; but that was after my mother died.  She died in the snow, on a journey—­like that sketch above the fireplace.  I’ve been told that it changed my father’s life.  He had been what they call wild before that—­but he wasn’t so any more.  He grew very hard-working and serious.  He was one of the pioneers of that country—­one of the very first to see its possibilities.  That was how he made his money; and when he died he left it to me.  I believe it’s a good deal.”

“Didn’t you hate being in the convent?” he asked, suddenly “I should.”

“N-no; not exactly.  I wasn’t unhappy.  The Sisters were kind to me.  Some of them spoiled me.  It wasn’t until after my father died, and I began to realize—­who I was, that I grew restless.  I felt I should never be happy until I was among people of my own kind.”

“And how did you get there?”

She smiled faintly to herself before answering.

“I never did.  There are no people of my kind.”

Embarrassed by the stress she seemed inclined to lay on this circumstance, he grasped at the first thought that might divert her from it.

“So you live with a guardian!  How do you like that?”

“I should like it well enough if he did—­that is, if his wife did.  You see,” she tried to explain, “she’s very sweet and gentle, and all that, but she’s devoted to the proprieties of life, and I seem to represent to her—­its improprieties.  I know it’s a trial to her to keep me, and so, in a way, it’s a trial to me to stay.”