barrassed, Mitchell persisted:

'Where is she, though?'

'Where? I can't tell that.'

'With Cromwell?'

'It may be.'

'Would you trust her with him?'

'Is he not to be trusted?' asked August, so quickly as to startle Paul.

If Paul was to be startled--but he was not. The teller in the bank had
told him--(Paul was one of those persons with whom acquaintances of
every quality lodge their secrets)--of the note Scheffer had taken up
with so little fuss and so much amazement. He saw that August for a
moment suspected that he knew the facts, but he was not yet prepared to
confess such knowledge; for he knew as well as Scheffer what Harry
Cromwell was to Josephine. So he answered:

'I should say so, August--if any man on earth could be.'

'So I supposed,' said Scheffer, quietly; and Paul hurried back to the
old queer topic, and said, half in jest: 'You mean to keep house,
Scheffer, I'll be bound.'

Scheffer's dark face brightened; he would share with Paul his pleasant
dream--the pleasant dream he cherished, though his sober sense denied
its possibility, and his consistent realism charged upon him the special
folly of fools.

'Aye,' said he; 'there'll be a library in it--but more select than that
of the Atheneum you were wishing for! You shall have the freedom of my
house, lad--I'll not forget how kind you've been to me. I shall have a
flower garden, and a yard deep enough for shade trees like those--but
you don't remember the place.'

Scheffer got up and walked away to the window.

'I've not the slightest doubt that you'll do everything you say! I vow I
wouldn't like to be the man to stand in your way to anything.'

Scheffer came back, and sat on the sofa beside Paul. His voice had an
almost fatherly tenderness in it when he began to speak, and it took no
colder tone.

'You were saying something about an improvement you could suggest in
some of the tools we use. Here they are. What did you mean?' He pulled
out a box from underneath the sofa.

Paul took the box, and looked over its contents; but it was easy to see
that he was in search of nothing. He was soon through his investigation,
and restored the box to its place. Then he looked at Scheffer, and
laughed.

But Scheffer answered the look by one that seemed to say that he
expected an explanation; whereupon Paul, now grave enough, stirred by a
sudden confidence, pulled from his pocket a box much smaller than that
which held August's tools, and passed it