we me nothing."

"You can not mislead me," she answered. "When they asked me to become
engaged to you, they told me about it."

I had forgotten. The whole repulsive, rotten business came back to me. And,
changed man that I had become in the last six months, I saw myself as I had
been. I felt that she was looking at me, was reading the degrading
confession in my telltale features.

"I will tell you the whole truth," said I. "I did use your father's and
your brother's debts to me as a means of getting _to_ you. But, before
God, Anita, I swear I was honest with you when I said to you I never hoped
or wished to win you in that way!"

"I believe you," she replied, and her tone and expression made my heart
leap with indescribable joy.

Love is sometimes most unwise in his use of the reins he puts on passion.
Instead of acting as impulse commanded, I said clumsily, "And I am very
different to-day from what I was last spring." It never occurred to me how
she might interpret those words.

"I know," she replied. She waited several seconds before adding: "I, too,
have changed. I see that I was far more guilty than you. There is no excuse
for me. I was badly brought up, as you used to say, but--"

"No--no," I began to protest.

She cut me short with a sad: "You need not be polite and spare my feelings.
Let's not talk of it. Let us go back to the object I had in coming for you
to-day."

"You owe me nothing," I repeated. "Your brother and your father settled
long ago. I lost nothing through them. And I've learned that if I had never
known you, Roebuck and Langdon would still have attacked me."

"What my uncle gave me has been transferred to you," said she, woman
fashion, not hearing what she did not care to heed. "I can't make you
accept it; but there it is, and there it stays."

"I can not take it," said I. "If you insist on leaving it in my name, I
shall simply return it to your uncle."

"I wrote him what I had done," she rejoined. "His answer came yesterday. He
approves it."

"Approves it!" I exclaimed.

"You do not know how eccentric he is," she explained, naturally
misunderstanding my astonishment. She took a letter from her bosom and
handed it to me. I read:

"DEAR MADAM: It was yours to do with as you pleased. If you ever find
yourself in the mood to visit, Gull House is open to you, provided you
bring no maid. I will not have female servants about.

"Yours truly,

"HOWARD FORRESTER."

"You will consent