uline?" he said in a broken voice that went straight to her heart.

"Yes, father." Then, after a silence: "But--we--we've been
sweethearts since we were children. And--I--father, I MUST stand by
him."

"Won't you trust me, child? Won't you believe ME rather than him?"

Pauline's only answer was a sigh. They loved each the other; he adored
her, she reverenced him. But between them, thick and high, rose the
barrier of custom and training. Comradeship, confidence were
impossible.

II.

OLIVIA TO THE RESCUE.

With the first glance into Olivia's dark gray eyes Pauline ceased to
resent her as an intruder. And soon she was feeling that some sort of
dawn was assailing her night.

Olivia was the older by three years. She seemed--and for her years,
was--serious and wise because, as the eldest of a large family, she was
lieutenant-general to her mother. Further, she had always had her own
way--when it was the right way and did not conflict with justice to her
brothers and sisters. And often her parents let her have her own way
when it was the wrong way, nor did they spoil the lesson by mitigating
disagreeable consequences.

"Do as you please," her mother used to say, when doing as she pleased
would involve less of mischief than of valuable experience, "and
perhaps you'll learn to please to do sensibly." Again, her father
would restrain her mother from interference--"Oh, let the girl alone.
She's got to teach herself how to behave, and she can't begin a minute
too young." This training had produced a self-reliant and
self-governing Olivia.

She wondered at the change in Pauline--Pauline, the light-hearted, the
effervescent of laughter and life, now silent and almost somber. It
was two weeks before she, not easily won to the confiding mood for all
her frankness, let Olivia into her secret. Of course, it was at night;
of course, they were in the same bed. And when Olivia had heard she
came nearer to the truth about Dumont than had Pauline's mother. But,
while she felt sure there was a way to cure Pauline, she knew that way
was not the one which had been pursued. "They've only made her
obstinate," she thought, as she, lying with hands clasped behind her
head, watched Pauline, propped upon an elbow, staring with dreamful
determination into the moonlight.

"It'll come out all right," she said; her voice always suggested that
she knew what she was talking about. "Your father'll give in sooner or
later-