voice and manner he
would have shown his own daughter.

"You poor, dear child!" he cried at last. "Now tell me about it. You
know how I love you both."

"Oh, Mr. Gregg, it is so dreadful!" she moaned in piteous tone as she
sank upon the cushions of the divan, Adam sitting beside her, her hand
tight clasped in his own. "I didn't think Phil would bring all this
trouble on us. I would forgive him anything but the way in which he
deceived papa. He knew there was no copper in the mine, and he kept
saying there was, and went right on speculating and using up
everything they had, and then when it was all to be found out he
turned coward and ruined everybody--and broke my heart! Oh, the
cruel--cruel--" and again she hid her face in the cushions.

"What would you think, little girl, if I told you that I advised him
to do it?" he pleaded as he patted her shoulder to quiet her.

"You couldn't do it!" Madeleine burst out in an incredulous tone,
raising herself on her elbow to look the better into his eyes. "You
_wouldn't_ do it! You are too kind."

"But I did--as much for your sake and your father's and brother's as
for his own. All the firm has lost so far is money. That can be
replaced. Had Philip not told the truth it would have been their
honor. That could never have been replaced."

And then with her hands fast in his, every thought that crossed her
mind revealed in her sweet, girlish face, Adam, his big, frank, brown
eyes looking into hers, told her the story of Philip's resolve. Not
the part which the portrait had played--not one word of that. She
would not have understood; then, too, that was Phil's secret, not his,
to tell; but the awakening of the dormant nature of an honest man,
incrusted with precedents and half-strangled in financial sophistries,
to the truth of what lay about him.

"You wouldn't want his lips to touch yours, my child, if they were
stained with a lie; nor could you have worn your wedding-gown if the
money that paid for it had been stolen. Your father will see it in the
same light some day. Then, if he had a dozen daughters he would give
every one of them to men like Philip Colton. The boy wants your help
now; he is without a penny in the world and has all his life to begin
over again. Now he can begin it clean. Get your arms around his neck
and tell him you love him and trust him. He needs you more to-day than
he will ever need you in all his life."

She had crept closer to him, nestling und