ccountably ashamed.

Mr. Paramor's lips quivered; he drew the draft closer, took up a blue
pencil, and, squeezing Shelton's arm, began to read. The latter,
following his uncle's rapid exposition of the clauses, was relieved when
he paused suddenly.

"If you die and she marries again," said Mr. Paramor, "she forfeits her
life interest--see?"

"Oh!" said Shelton; "wait a minute, Uncle Ted."

Mr. Paramor waited, biting his pencil; a smile flickered on his mouth,
and was decorously subdued. It was Shelton's turn to walk about.

"If she marries again," he repeated to himself.

Mr. Paramor was a keen fisherman; he watched his nephew as he might have
watched a fish he had just landed.

"It's very usual," he remarked.

Shelton took another turn.

"She forfeits," thought he; "exactly."

When he was dead, he would have no other way of seeing that she continued
to belong to him. Exactly!

Mr. Paramor's haunting eyes were fastened on his nephew's face.

"Well, my dear," they seemed to say, "what 's the matter?"

Exactly! Why should she have his money if she married again? She would
forfeit it. There was comfort in the thought. Shelton came back and
carefully reread the clause, to put the thing on a purely business basis,
and disguise the real significance of what was passing in his mind.

"If I die and she marries again," he repeated aloud, "she forfeits."

What wiser provision for a man passionately in love could possibly have
been devised? His uncle's eye travelled beyond him, humanely turning
from the last despairing wriggles of his fish.

"I don't want to tie her," said Shelton suddenly.

The corners of Mr. Paramour's mouth flew up.

"You want the forfeiture out?" he asked.

The blood rushed into Shelton's face; he felt he had been detected in a
piece of sentiment.

"Ye-es," he stammered.

"Sure?"

"Quite!" The answer was a little sulky.

Her uncle's pencil descended on the clause, and he resumed the reading of
the draft, but Shelton could not follow it; he was too much occupied in
considering exactly why Mr. Paramor had been amused, and to do this he
was obliged to keep his eyes upon him. Those features, just pleasantly
rugged; the springy poise of the figure; the hair neither straight nor
curly, neither short nor long; the haunting look of his eyes and the
humorous look of his mouth; his clothes neither shabby nor dandified; his
serviceable, fine hands; above all, the equability of the h