ment with a
Blackmailing Woman_

"No man can guard against being roped in by a scheming woman
the first time; but if it happens twice he deserves it, and he
should be turned out to stay an idiot, for the signs are so
plain. A man swindler takes a man's money and makes a fool of
him; but a woman swindler takes a man's money and leaves a
smirch on him. Only a man's nearest and dearest can help him
live down such a smirch; so, Agnes, if my son has been this
particular variety of everlasting blank fool, don't turn
against him. He needs you. Moreover, you'll find him improved
by it. He'll be so much more humble."

"I didn't really need that letter," Agnes shyly confessed; "but maybe
it helped some."

CHAPTER XXII

AGNES FINDS BOBBY A SLING AND BOBBY PUTS A STONE IN IT

The wonderful change in a girl who, through her love, has become all
woman, that was the marvel to Bobby; the breadth of her knowledge, the
depth of her sympathy, the boundlessness of her compassionate
forgiveness, her quality of motherliness; and this last was perhaps
the greatest marvel of all. Yet even his marveling did not encompass
all the wonder. In his last exploit, more full of folly than anything
into which he had yet blundered, and the one which, of all others,
might most have turned her from him, Agnes had had the harder part; to
sit at home and wait, to dread she knew not what. The certainty which
finally evolved had less of distress in it than not to know while day
by day passed by. One thing had made it easier: never for one moment
had she lost faith in Bobby, in any way. She was certain, however,
that financially his trip would be a losing one, and from the time he
left she kept her mind almost constantly upon the thought of his
future. She had become almost desperately anxious for him to fulfill
the hopes of his father, and day by day she studied the commercial
field as she had never thought it possible that she could do. There
was no line of industry upon which she did not ponder, and there was
scarcely any morning that she did not at the breakfast table ask Dan
Elliston the ins and outs of some business. If he was not able to tell
her all she wanted to know, she usually commissioned him to find out.
He took these requests in good part, and if she accomplished nothing
else by all her inquiries she acquired such a commercial education as
falls to the lot of but few home-kept young wom