own; but, since you were
sure to find it out sooner or later, it might as well come now. What I
have done is wise and right, the most satisfactory thing to me, and to
others wiser than I. But I wish you would never speak of it."

"Never speak of your coming forward with your whole fortune to make up
the loss that this fellow's claim will be to us? Never speak of it!"
cried Archdale. "And accept it? From you? You certainly have a
flattering opinion of me."

"If it were like any business losses," she said, "it would be different.
But this is something nobody could have been prepared for; it needs
something outside of the routine to meet it." She waited a moment. "Will
you put your case, as you said you were going to do?" she asked. "It
will make it clearer, and you will see that there is nothing
extraordinary. I think you need not say anything more about--about us,
that is all understood. Go on from there."

"A father and a son, then, are nominally in business together," he
answered; "the father does the work; the son has a generous share of the
profits. Matters are going on swimmingly. Suddenly a claimant turns up
who wants a grand slice of the property. He is the only son of the
father's elder brother,--a being who was not known to have existed, that
is, who was supposed to have died when an infant. The father, my father,
was named for him, and my grandfather's will gave the largest share of
his fortune to his oldest son, Walter, whom he supposed to be my father,
but who was really Gerald Edmonson's father--if the fellow's proofs turn
out valid; they are having a thorough overhauling. My uncle does not
suffer; it is only we. I am sorry," he added, "that you are liable to be
in any way connected with loss, but at the worst it is so remotely that
it will never affect you. As for the other matter, the story,"--he
stopped with a movement of irritation, perhaps of some deeper
feeling,--"that must be borne as best it can, nothing of that falls upon
you, certainly. How the matter concerns a young lady at all I can't
imagine; so I fail to see what interest you can have in it, or what
right to move in it."

"You fail to see?" she said and gave him a smile full of sweetness. It
was not a coaxing smile, as if she begged him to reconsider his
opinions; it indorsed her own while placidly acquiescing in mutual
indifference. "Besides, do you know it was through me that the portrait
was found?" And she gave him an account of the di