much thought. Not that I have distrusted
you, remember," he added with a kind glance.

"I am not often deceived in a man, and I think I could trust my child
to you." I gave a great gasp of pleasure, but he added immediately,
"under certain circumstances."

"And those circumstances?" I asked anxiously.

"First," he began as he sank into an arm-chair, "you are of different
religions; you are not a Catholic, I understand."

I answered him smiling.

"I don't think we shall disagree over that," I replied, "Dolores and
her children shall worship the Almighty as she wishes. My religion is
that of a man of the world, I worship with all."

The old man nodded his grey head and smiled.

"I did not expect you to be very bigoted," he answered quietly.

"Now, there is another point, Don Juan," I continued, "upon which I
must satisfy you, and that is my ability to keep a wife."

I told him of my little estate in Hampshire with its small manor house
on the shores of the Solent, and how I had let it to a yachting man who
had taken a fancy to it; it being too large for my modest bachelor
wants. I told him proudly of my balance at the bank, swelled by the
thousand of the old lady of Monmouth Street, of which he already knew.
I told him what my income was from every source, and finally what I
succeeded in wringing annually from the publishing body. This last
item seemed to amuse him mightily, despite his polite effort to listen
to me with becoming solemnity.

"Very good, very good, Anstruther," he said at last encouragingly, "I
see you are quite capable of maintaining a wife in a modest way. It is
very creditable to you, too, that you have taken to making money by
your pen. With regard to Dolores, however, should she become your
wife, she is not likely to be a burden to you financially. She will,
in the first place, become entitled on her marriage to an income of
fifty thousand dollars, which arises from property which I settled upon
her mother.

"Then, she is my only child as you know, and I shall make a further
settlement upon her. My income has been accumulating for years, I want
but little; when I die she and her children will have _all_."

The amount he mentioned certainly took my breath away, but I raised my
hand and asked him to stop.

"Believe me, Don Juan," I said, "I should be a happier man if I could
supply her wants by the work of my hands."

"I _do_ believe you," he answered, "and those would be my o