he evening if I may." He paused hesitatingly for
a moment. "Have your wife and daughter ever expressed any opinion on
this matter?"

"No," said Harcourt. "Mrs. Harcourt knows nothing of anything that does
not happen IN the house; Euphemia knows only the things that happen out
of it where she is visiting--and I suppose that young men prefer to
talk to her about other things than the slanders of her father. And
Clementina--well, you know how calm and superior to these things SHE
is."

"For that very reason I thought that perhaps she might be able to see
them more clearly,--but no matter! I dare say you are quite right in
not discussing them at home." This was the fact, although Grant had not
forgotten that Harcourt had put forward his daughters as a reason for
stopping the scandal some weeks before,--a reason which, however, seemed
never to have been borne out by any apparent sensitiveness of the girls
themselves.

When Grant had left, Harcourt remained for some moments steadfastly
gazing from the window over the Tasajara plain. He had not lost his
look of concentrated power, nor his determination to fight. A struggle
between himself and the phantoms of the past had become now a necessary
stimulus for its own sake,--for the sake of his mental and physical
equipoise. He saw before him the pale, agitated, irresolute features of
'Lige Curtis,--not the man HE had injured, but the man who had injured
HIM, whose spirit was aimlessly and wantonly--for he had never
attempted to get back his possessions in his lifetime, nor ever tried
to communicate with the possessor--striking at him in the shadow. And
it was THAT man, that pale, writhing, frightened wretch whom he had once
mercifully helped! Yes, whose LIFE he had even saved that night from
exposure and delirium tremens when he had given him the whiskey. And
this life he had saved, only to have it set in motion a conspiracy to
ruin him! Who knows that 'Lige had not purposely conceived what they had
believed to be an attempt at suicide, only to cast suspicion of murder
on HIM! From which it will be perceived that Harcourt's powers of moral
reasoning had not improved in five years, and that even the impartiality
he had just shown in his description of 'Lige to Grant had been
swallowed up in this new sense of injury. The founder of Tasajara, whose
cool business logic, unfailing foresight, and practical deductions were
never at fault, was once more childishly adrift in his moral