received a note from you this morning," he began briskly, "asking me
to come in--"

The girl's voice interrupted him. Standing beside the little
typewriter-table, exactly where her caller had surprised her, she had
watched with a mortifying dumbness the second meeting between the
pleasure-dog and the little Doctor that was. But now pride sprang to her
aid, stinging her into speech. For it was an unendurable thing that she
should thus tamely surrender to him the mastery of her situation, and
suffer her own fault to be glossed over so ingloriously.

"Won't you let me tell you," she began hurriedly, "how sorry I am--how
ashamed--that I misjudged--"

"No! No! I beg you to stop. There is not the smallest occasion for
anything of that sort--"

"Don't you see my dreadful position? I suspect you, misjudge you--wrong
you at every step--and all the time you are doing a thing so fine--so
generous and splendid--that I am humiliated--to--"

Once again she saw that painful transformation in his face: a difficult
dull-red flood sweeping over it, only to recede instantly, leaving him
white from neck to brow.

"What is the use of talking in this way?" he asked peremptorily. "What
is the good of it, I say? The matter is over and done with. Everything
is all right--his telling you wipes it all from the slate, just as I
said. Don't you see that? Well, can't you dismiss the whole incident
from your mind and forget that it ever happened?"

"I will try--if that is what you wish."

She turned away, utterly disappointed and disconcerted by his summary
disposal of the burning topic over which she had planned such a long and
satisfying discussion. He started to say something, checked himself, and
said something entirely different.

"I have received your note," he began directly, "asking me to come in
and see you about the matter of difference between the estates. That is
why I have called. I trust that this means that you are going to be
sensible and take your money."

"In a way--yes. I will tell you--what I have thought."

"Well, sit down to tell me please. You look tired; not well at all. Not
in the least. Take this comfortable chair."

Obediently she sat down in Mr. Dayne's high-backed swivel-chair, which,
when she leaned back, let her neat-shod little feet swing clear of the
floor. The chair was a happy thought; it steadied her; so did his
unexampled solicitousness, which showed, she thought, that her emotion
had not escaped h