Paul, who had been getting uncomfortable;
"he has a heart, as he said, after all!"

"How does that seem to strike you?" added Paradine.

"It shtrikes me as awful rot," said Dick, with refreshing candour.

"It's the language of conscience, but I don't expect you to see it in
the same light. I don't mind confessing to you, either, that I'm a poor
devil to whom money and a safe and respectable position (all of which I
have here) are great considerations. But whenever I see the finger of
duty and honour and family affection all beckoning me along a particular
road, I make a point of obeying their monitions--occasionally. I don't
mean to say that I never have bolted down a back way, instead, when it
was made worth my while, or that I never will."

"I wonder what he's driving at now," thought Paul.

"I don't know about duty and honour, and all that," said Dick; "my head
aches, it's the noise they're making upstairs. Are you goin' to tell?"

"The fact is, my dear boy, that when one has had a keen sense of honour
in constant use for several years, it's like most other articles, apt to
become a little the worse for wear. Mine is not what it used to be,
Dicky (that's your name, isn't it?). Our powers fail as we grow old."

"I don' know what you're talking about!" said Dick helplessly. "Do tell
me what you mean to do."

"Well then, your head's clear enough to understand this much, I hope,"
said Paradine a little impatiently, "that, if I did my duty and exposed
you, you wouldn't be able to keep up the farce for a single hour, in
spite of all your personal advantages--you know that, don't you?"

"I shpose I know that," said Dick feebly.

"You know too, that if I could be induced--mind, I don't say I can--to
hold my tongue and stay on here and look after you and keep you from
betraying yourself by any more of these schoolboy follies, there's not
much fear that anyone else will ever find out the secret----"

"Which are you going to do, then?" said Dick.

"Suppose I say that I like you, that you have shown me more kindness in
a single week than ever your respectable father has since I first made
his acquaintance? Suppose I say that I am willing to let the sense of
honour and duty, and all the rest of it, go overboard together; that we
two together are a match for Papa, wherever he may be and whatever he
chooses to say and do?"

There was a veiled defiance in his voice that seemed meant for more than
Dick, and alarmed Mr.