nly ground."

"The only ground?"

"I was thinking of my poor father," said Matt.

"He said some sharp things to that wretched creature at the meeting of
the Board--called him a thief, and I dare say other hard names--and told
him that the best thing that could happen to him was a railroad accident
on his way home."

"Ah!"

"You see? When he read the account of that accident in the paper this
morning, and found a name so much like Northwick's among the victims, he
was fearfully broken up, of course. He felt somehow as if he had caused
his death--I could see that, though of course he wouldn't admit anything
of the kind."

"Of course," said Wade, compassionately.

"I suppose it isn't well to invoke death in any way. He is like the
devil, and only too apt to come, if you ask for him. I don't mean
anything superstitious, and I don't suppose my father really has any
superstitious feeling about the matter. But he's been rather a
friend--or a victim--of that damnable theory that the gentlemanly way
out of a difficulty like Northwick's is suicide, and I suppose he spoke
from association with it, or by an impulse from it. He has been
telegraphing right and left, to try to verify the reports, as it was his
business and duty to do, anyway; and he caught at the notion of my
coming up here with Louise to see if we could be of any use to those two
poor women."

"Poor women!" Wade echoed. "The worst must fall upon them, as the worst
always seems to do."

"Yes, wherever a cruel blow falls there seems to be a woman for it to
fall on. And you see what a refinement of cruelty this is going to be
when it reaches them? They have got to know that their father met that
awful death, and that he met it because he was a defaulter and was
running away. I suppose the papers will be full of it."

"That seems intolerable. Couldn't anything be done to stop them?"

"Why the thing has to come out. You can keep happiness a secret, but
sorrow and shame have to come out--I don't know why, but they do. Then,
when they come out, we feel as if the means of their publicity were the
cause of them. It's very unphilosophical." They walked slowly along in
silence for a few moments, and then Matt's revery broke out again in
words: "Well, it's to be seen now whether she has the strength that
bears, or the strength that breaks. The way she held her head, as she
took the reins and drove off, with poor Louise beside her palpitating
with sympathy for her