uggested.

"To me?"

"To you--The fact is, I do."

Perhaps I was morbid about the ring: it seemed to me she lifted her hand
and looked at it.

"It's drafty in here: don't you think so?" she asked suddenly, looking
back of her. Probably she had not meant it, but I got up and closed the
door into the hall. When I came back I took the chair next to her, and
for a moment we said nothing. The log threw out tiny red devil sparks,
and the clock chimed eight, very slowly.

"Harry Wardrop was here last night," I said, poking down the log with my
heel.

"Here?"

"Yes. I suppose I was wrong, but I did not say you were here."

She turned and looked at me closely, out of the most beautiful eyes I
ever saw.

"I'm not afraid to see him," she said proudly, "and he ought not to be
afraid to see me."

"I want to tell you something before you see him. Last night, before he
came, I thought that--well, that at least he knew something of--the
things we want to know."

"Yes?"

"In justice to him, and because I want to fight fair, I tell you
to-night that I don't believe he knows anything about your father's
death, and that I believe he was robbed that night at Bellwood."

"What about the pearls he sold at Plattsburg?" she asked suddenly.

"I think when the proper time comes, he will tell about that too,
Margery." I did not notice my use of her name until too late. If she
heard, she failed to resent it. "After all, if you love him, hardly
anything else matters, does it? How do we know but that he was in
trouble, and that Aunt Jane herself gave them to him?"

She looked at me with a little perplexity.

"You plead his cause very well," she said. "Did he ask you to speak to
me?"

"I won't run a race with a man who is lame," I said quietly. "Ethically,
I ought to go away and leave you to your dreams, but I am not going to
do it. If you love Wardrop as a woman ought to love the man she marries,
then marry him and I hope you will be happy. If you don't--no, let me
finish. I have made up my mind to clear him if I can: to bring him to
you with a clear slate. Then, I know it is audacious, but I am going to
come, too, and--I'm going to plead for myself then, unless you send me
away."

She sat with her head bent, her color coming and going nervously. Now
she looked up at me with what was the ghost of a smile.

"It sounds like a threat," she said in a low voice. "And you--I wonder
if you always get what you want?"

Then, of co