ly tough kind of young person. I
never quite saw what Louise found to like in her."

"They were at school together," said the son. "She's a sufficiently
offensive person, I fancy; or might be. But she sometimes struck me as a
person that one might be easily unjust to, for that very reason; I
suppose she has the fascination that a proud girl has for a girl like
Louise."

Hilary asked, with a divergence more apparent than real, "How is that
affair of hers with Jack Wilmington?"

"I don't know. It seems to have that quality of mystery that belongs to
all affairs of the kind when they hang fire. We expect people to get
married, and be done with it, though that may not really be the way to
be done with it."

"Wasn't there some scandal about him, of some kind?"

"Yes; but I never believed in it."

"He always struck me as something of a cub, but somehow he doesn't seem
the sort of a fellow to give the girl up because--"

"Because her father is a fraud?" Matt suggested. "No, I don't think he
is, quite. But there are always a great many things that enter into the
matter besides a man's feelings, or his principles, even. I can't say
what I think Wilmington would do. What steps do you propose to take next
in the matter?"

"I promised him he shouldn't be followed up, while he was trying to
right himself. If we find he's gone, we must give the case into the
hands of the detectives, I suppose." The disgust showed itself in
Hilary's face, which was an index to all his emotions, and his son said,
with a smile of sympathy:

"The apparatus of justice isn't exactly attractive, even when one isn't
a criminal. But I don't know that it's any more repulsive than the
apparatus of commerce, or business, as we call it. Some dirt seems to
get on everybody's bread by the time he's earned it, or on his money
even when he's made it in large sums as our class do."

The last words gave the father a chance to vent his vexation with
himself upon his son. "I wish you wouldn't talk that walking-delegate's
rant with me, Matt. If I let you alone in your nonsense, I think you may
fitly take it as a sign that I wish to be let alone myself."

"I beg your pardon," said the young man. "I didn't wish to annoy you."

"Don't do it, then." After a moment, Hilary added with a return to his
own sense of deficiency, "The whole thing's as thoroughly distasteful to
me as it can be. But I can't see how I could have acted otherwise than
I've done. I know I'v