“It was your uncle’s room.  Do you mind sleeping here?  It’s the easiest to get ready.”

“Not with a fire—­and I may have a lamp, I suppose?”

At his question Patsey appeared with an armful of resinous pine, and a few minutes later, a cheerful blaze was chasing the shadows up the great brick chimney.  When Molly returned with the brandy, Gay was leaning against the mantelpiece idly burning a bunch of dried cat-tails he had taken from a blue-and-white china vase.

“It’s a gloomy old business, isn’t it?” he observed, glancing from the high canopied bed with its hangings of faded damask to an engraving of the Marriage of Pocahontas between the dormer-windows.  “If there are ghosts about, I suppose I’d better prepare to face them.”

“Only in the west wing, the darkies say, but I think they are bats.  As for those in the haunt’s walk, I never believed in them.  Patsey is bringing your brandy.  Can I do anything else for you?”

“Only tell me,” he burst out, “why in thunder the whole county hates me?”

She laughed shortly.  “I can’t tell you—­wait and find out.”

Here audacity half angered, half paralyzed him.

“What a vixen you are!” he observed presently with grudging respect.

The crimson flooded her face, and he watched her teeth gleam dangerously, as if she were bracing herself for a retort.  The impulse to torment her was strong in him, and he yielded to it much as a boy might have teased a small captive animal of the woods.

“With such a temper you ought to have been an ugly woman,” he said, “but you’re so pretty I’m strongly inclined to kiss you.”

“If you do, I’ll strike you,” she gasped.

The virgin in her showed fierce and passionate, not shy and fleeting.  That she was by instinct savagely pure, he could tell by the look of her.

“I believe it so perfectly that I’ve no intention of trying,” he rejoined.

“I’m not half so pretty as my mother was,” she said after a pause.

Her loyalty to the unfortunate Janet touched him to sympathy.  “Don’t quarrel with me, Molly,” he pleaded, “for I mean to be friends with you.”

As he uttered the words, he was conscious of a pleasant feeling of self-approbation while his nature vibrated to the lofty impulse.  This sensation was so gratifying while it lasted that his manner assumed a certain austerity as one who had determined to be virtuous at any cost.  Morally he was on stilts for the moment, and the sense of elevation was as novel as it was insecure.

“I know you are a good girl, Molly,” he observed staidly, “that is why I am so anxious to be your friend.”

“Is there nothing more that I can do for you?” she inquired, with frigid reserve, as she took up the lantern.

“Yes, one thing—­you can shake hands.”

The expression of indignant surprise appeared again in her face, and she fell back a step, shaking her head stubbornly as she did so.