orward quite as much as you are to
letting the world know my luck; but unfortunately you've just raised the
question at an impossible moment, Sabina."

"Why? Surely nothing can make it impossible to clear my good name,
Raymond?"

"I've got a good name, too. At least, I imagine so."

"Our names are one, or should be."

"Not yet, exactly. I wanted to spare you bothers. I do spare you all the
bothers I can; but, of course, I've got my own, too, like everybody
else. You see it's rather vital to your future, which you're naturally
so keen about, Sabina, that I keep in with my brother. You'll admit
that much. Well, for the moment I'm having the deuce of a row with him.
You know what an exacting beggar he is. He will have his pound of flesh,
and he has no sympathy for anything on two legs but himself. I asked him
for a fortnight's holiday."

"A fortnight's holiday, Raymond!"

"Yes--that's not very wonderful, is it? But, of course, you can't
understand what this work is to me, because you look at it from a
different angle. Anyway I want a holiday--to get right away and consider
things; and he won't let me have it. And finding that, I lost my temper.
And if, at the present moment, Daniel hears that we're engaged to be
married, Sabina, it's about fifty to one that he'd chuck me altogether
and stop my dirty little allowance also."

They had reached the gate of 'The Magnolias,' and Sabina did a startling
thing. She turned from him and went down the path to the back entrance
without another word. But this he could not stand. His heart smote him
and he called her with such emotion that she also was sorrowful and came
back to the gate.

"Good God! you frightened me," he said. "This is a quarrel, Sabina--our
first and last, I hope. Never, never let anything come between us.
That's unthinkable and I won't have it. You must give and take, my
precious girl. And so must I. But look at it. What on earth happens to
us if Daniel fires me out of the Mill?"

"He's a just man," she answered. "Dislike him as we may, he's a just man
and you need not fear him, or anybody else, if you do the right thing."

"You oppose your will to mine, then, Sabina?"

"I don't know your will. I thought I did; I thought I understood you so
well by now and was learning better and better how to please you. But
now I tell you I am being wronged, and you say nothing can be done."

"I never said so. I'm not a blackguard, Sabina, and you ought to know
that