ner. I meant to win both her regard
and yours by acts, not words. I felt that I had a great deal to do and
I was prepared to work and wait. I loved her--" He turned away his head
and the silence which filled up the gap, united those two hearts, as the
old and young are seldom united.

But when a little later, Mr. Challoner rejoined Doris, in her little
sitting-room, he nevertheless showed a perplexity she had hoped to see
removed by this understanding with the younger Brotherson.

The cause became apparent as soon as he spoke.

"These brothers hold by each other," said he. "Oswald will hear nothing
against Orlando. He says that he has redeemed his fault. He does not
even protest that his brother's word is to be believed in this matter.
He does not seem to think that necessary. He evidently regards Orlando's
personality as speaking as truly and satisfactorily for itself, as his
own does. And I dared not undeceive him."

"He does not know all our reasons for distrust. He has heard nothing
about the poor washerwoman."

"No, and he must not,--not for weeks. He has borne all that he can."

"His confidence in his older brother is sublime. I do not share it; but
I cannot help but respect him for it."

It was warmly said, and Mr. Challoner could not forbear casting an
anxious look at her upturned face. What he saw there made him turn away
with a sigh.

"This confidence has for me a very unhappy side," he remarked. "It shows
me Oswald's thought. He who loved her best, accepts the cruel verdict of
an unreasoning public."

Doris' large eyes burned with a weird light upon his face.

"He has not had my dream," she murmured, with all the quiet of an
unmoved conviction.

Yet as the days went by, even her manner changed towards the busy
inventor. It was hardly possible for it not to. The high stand he took;
the regard accorded him on every side; his talent; his conversation,
which was an education in itself, and, above all, his absorption in a
work daily advancing towards completion, removed him so insensibly and
yet so decidedly, from the hideous past of tragedy with which his name,
if not his honour, was associated, that, unconsciously to herself, she
gradually lost her icy air of repulsion and lent him a more or less
attentive ear, when he chose to join their small company of an evening.
The result was that he turned so bright a side upon her that toleration
merged from day to day into admiration and memory lost itself