ave a right to save your son from such trouble. But there is
something else--do you know what has happened? He has been making love
to Clare--he has asked her to marry him, and she has refused. She told
me this morning--and I have told her the truth--that you and I were once
married."

She paused, and watched Sir Adam's furrowed face.

"I'm glad of that," he said. "I'm glad that it has all come out on the
same day. He knows everything, and he has told me everything. I don't
know how it's all going to end, but I want you to believe one thing. If
he had guessed the truth, he would never have said a word of love to
her. He's not that kind of boy. You do believe me, don't you?"

"Yes, I believe you. But the worst of it is that she cares for him
too--in a way I can't understand. She has some reason, or she thinks she
has, for disliking him, as she calls it. She wouldn't tell me. But she
cares for him all the same. She has told him, though she won't tell me.
There is something horrible in the idea of our children falling in love
with each other."

Mrs. Bowring spoke quietly, but her pale face and nervous mouth told
more than her words.

Sir Adam explained to her shortly what had happened on the first evening
after Brook's arrival, and how Clare had heard it all, sitting in the
shadow just above the platform. Mrs. Bowring listened in silence,
covering her eyes with her hands. There was a long pause after he had
finished speaking, but still she said nothing.

"I should like him to marry her," said Sir Adam at last, in a low voice.

She started and looked at him uneasily, remembering how well she had
once loved him, and how he had broken her heart when she was young. He
met her eyes quietly.

"You don't know him," he said. "He loves her, and he will be to
her--what I wasn't to you."

"How can you say that he loves her? Three weeks ago he loved that Mrs.
Crosby."

"He? He never cared for her--not even at first."

"He was all the more heartless and bad to make her think that he did."

"She never thought so, for a moment. She wanted my money, and she
thought that she could catch him."

"Perhaps--I saw her, and I did not like her face. She had the look of an
adventuress about her. That doesn't change the main facts. Your son and
she were--flirting, to say the least of it, three weeks ago. And now he
thinks himself in love with my daughter. It would be madness to trust
such a man--even if there were not the rest to hi