ngs stand, in order that you may help your--your
husband"--he paused, significantly--"if possible, to some
solution. It seems a pity to me, as it does to the various other
members of his family, that he should lose all this money."

Jennie had turned her head away and was staring at the floor. She
faced him now steadily. "He mustn't lose it," she said; "it isn't fair
that he should."

"I am most delighted to hear you say that, Mrs.--Mrs. Kane,"
he went on, using for the first time her improbable title as Lester's
wife, without hesitation. "I may as well be very frank with you, and
say that I feared you might take this information in quite another
spirit. Of course you know to begin with that the Kane family is very
clannish. Mrs. Kane, your--ah--your husband's mother, was a
very proud and rather distant woman, and his sisters and brothers are
rather set in their notions as to what constitute proper family
connections. They look upon his relationship to you as irregular,
and--pardon me if I appear to be a little cruel--as not
generally satisfactory. As you know, there had been so much talk in
the last few years that Mr. Kane senior did not believe that the
situation could ever be nicely adjusted, so far as the family was
concerned. He felt that his son had not gone about it right in the
first place. One of the conditions of his will was that if your
husband--pardon me--if his son did not accept the
proposition in regard to separating from you and taking up his
rightful share of the estate, then to inherit anything at
all--the mere ten thousand a year I mentioned before--he
must--ah--he must pardon me, I seem a little brutal, but not
intentionally so--marry you."

Jennie winced. It was such a cruel thing to say this to her face.
This whole attempt to live together illegally had proved disastrous at
every step. There was only one solution to the unfortunate
business--she could see that plainly. She must leave him, or he
must leave her. There was no other alternative. Lester living on ten
thousand dollars a year! It seemed silly.

Mr. O'Brien was watching her curiously. He was thinking that Lester
both had and had not made a mistake. Why had he not married her in the
first place? She was charming.

"There is just one other point which I wish to make in this
connection, Mrs. Kane," he went on softly and easily. "I see now that
it will not make any difference to you, but I am commissioned and in a
way constrained to m