other
fair things there are in life I would place you in a convent, for the
best man who ever lived, little girl, is not good enough to take into
his keeping the worst woman. They break their hearts with their
weaknesses--they break their hearts."

"But you, dear Dada--"

"I did it! God forgive me, I did it, too!"

At this point he gained control of himself and his wild speech, but the
words remained forever an echo in her heart.

They passed the next summer in the Adirondacks, and here in the deep
woods she spent the pleasantest period of her life. She was strangely
atune with the big pines and the fragrant shadows which lay beneath
them. Arsdale used to sit beside her in these solitudes and read aloud
by the hour from the poets in his sweet musical voice. At such times
she wondered more than ever what he had meant in that outburst on the
steamer. Here, too, he told her more of her mother who had died at
almost the same time that Ben's mother had died. But of the father all
he ever told her was,

"My brother was an Arsdale--like the rest of us."

So she lived her peaceful life and was conscious of missing nothing,
save at odd moments the man with the beautiful mustache. Marie, the
old housekeeper, was as careful of her as Jacques was of her father.
Ben was kind to her, though during the latter years he had grown a bit
out of her life. This had worried the father--this and other things.
One day he had called her into the library, and though he was greatly
agitated she saw that it was not in the usual way.

"Little girl," he said, "if it should so happen that you are ever left
alone here with Ben and he--he does not seem to act quite himself, I
want you to promise me that you will go to this address which I shall
leave for you."

She had promised, knowing well to what he referred.

Then his face had hardened.

"There is still another thing you must promise; if at the end of six
months he is no better I wish you to promise that you will not live in
this house with him or anywhere near him--that you will cut off your
life utterly from his life."

"But, Dada--"

"Promise."

She promised again, little thinking that the crisis of which he seemed
to have a foreboding was so near at hand. A dark day came within two
months when her soul was rent with the knowledge that he lay stark and
cold in that very library where so much of his life had been lived.
Marie gathered her into her arms and held her tig