meeting the unresponding maturity of her clear eyes he abandoned it.
"You know, Clementina, I have never interfered in your affairs, nor
tried to influence your friendships for anybody. Whatever people may
have to say of me they can't say that! I've always trusted you, as I
would myself, to choose your own associates; I have never regretted it,
and I don't regret it now. But I'd like to know--I have reasons to-day
for asking--how matters stand between you and Grant."

The Parian head of Minerva on the bookcase above her did not offer the
spectator a face less free from maidenly confusion than Clementina's
at that moment. Her father had certainly expected none, but he was not
prepared for the perfect coolness of her reply.

"Do you mean, have I ACCEPTED him?"

"No,--well--yes."

"No, then! Is that what he wished to see you about? It was understood
that he was not to allude again to the subject to any one."

"He has not to ME. It was only my own idea. He had something very
different to tell me. You may not know, Clementina," he begun
cautiously, "that I have been lately the subject of some anonymous
slanders, and Grant has taken the trouble to track them down for me. It
is a calumny that goes back as far as Sidon, and I may want your level
head and good memory to help me to refute it." He then repeated calmly
and clearly, with no trace of the fury that had raged within him a
moment before, the substance of Grant's revelation.

The young girl listened without apparent emotion. When he had finished
she said quickly: "And what do you want me to recollect?"

The hardest part of Harcourt's task was coming. "Well, don't you
remember that I told you the day the surveyors went away--that--I had
bought this land of 'Lige Curtis some time before?"

"Yes, I remember your saying so, but"--

"But what?"

"I thought you only meant that to satisfy mother."

Daniel Harcourt felt the blood settling round his heart, but he was
constrained by an irresistible impulse to know the worst. "Well, what
did YOU think it really was?"

"I only thought that 'Lige Curtis had simply let you have it, that's
all."

Harcourt breathed again. "But what for? Why should he?"

"Well--ON MY ACCOUNT."

"On YOUR account! What in Heaven's name had YOU to do with it?"

"He loved me." There was not the slightest trace of vanity,
self-consciousness or coquetry in her quiet, fateful face, and for this
very reason Harcourt knew that she was speaki