t was real
kind of you, kinder than anything that anyone except Dad has ever done.
I didn't even have a name, you know. I was just the daughter of--what
did that lawyer call him?--a 'peripatetic gambler', but you--you----"

She broke off in sudden confusion, and he drew a swift breath.

"You were yourself, and I told you that nothing else mattered." His
tone was very low.

"But I'm something else, now." There was a note of shy, wistful
eagerness in her voice. "I--I'm Willa Murdaugh and that seems to mean
a lot, up in New York. I'm not just Gentleman Geoff's Billie, I'm
going to be a lady, like your sister----"

"You will be a much more important one, with a highly exalted social
position and hosts of influential friends," he responded slowly. "You
will meet her, she is an acquaintance of the Halsteads and their set,
but you will find her a simple, unfashionable girl, compared to the
rest. If you had gone to make your home with her, as I suggested, you
would not have known the smart crowd that will flock about you now, but
clever people who have done or are doing big things. I wonder how the
social life will strike you?"

"All of a heap, I expect," she replied, absently. Her voice was
colorless, stunned. "That was what you meant, that I should go and
live with your sister? And you, would you have been there, too?"

"I?" he laughed with a trace of bitterness. "I am a rolling stone,
Miss Murdaugh. My work calls me to the ends of the earth, but I would
probably have looked in on you every few years to say 'hello.'
However, you would scarcely have been with my sister as long as that.
Some lucky fellow would have persuaded you to make him happy. You will
be a great social success----"

"As if I cared!" She stopped him with her familiar little gesture.
"I--I didn't just understand what you meant. I thought--but it doesn't
matter anyway, does it? I've got to get in the game anyway, but you
don't suppose I want to, do you? You don't suppose I want the money of
that old man who stacked the cards against my poor father, or care
about these Halstead people that never knew I was alive? I am doing it
because I think Dad would want me to, and because it will help me in
something else I've set out to do."

"The thing you spoke of, that you could not let me or anyone in on?" he
asked in surprise. "Haven't you relinquished it, whatever it was?
You'll be too much taken up with your new life to remember old pla