fatal morning, a brief but
emphatic interview between himself and Mrs. McClosky had followed. He
had insisted upon her immediately accompanying Susy and himself to
Mrs. Peyton in San Francisco. Horror-stricken and terrified at the
catastrophe, and frightened by the strange looks of the excited
servants, they did not dare to disobey him. He had left them with Mrs.
Peyton in the briefest preliminary interview, during which he spoke only
of the catastrophe, shielding the woman from the presumption of having
provoked it, and urging only the importance of settling the question
of guardianship at once. It was odd that Mrs. Peyton had been less
disturbed than he imagined she would be at even his charitable version
of Susy's unfaithfulness to her; it even seemed to him that she had
already suspected it. But as he was about to withdraw to leave her to
meet them alone, she had stopped him suddenly.

"What would you advise me to do?"

It was his first interview with her since the revelation of his own
feelings. He looked into the pleading, troubled eyes of the woman he now
knew he had loved, and stammered:--

"You alone can judge. Only you must remember that one cannot force an
affection any more than one can prevent it."

He felt himself blushing, and, conscious of the construction of his
words, he even fancied that she was displeased.

"Then you have no preference?" she said, a little impatiently.

"None."

She made a slight gesture with her handsome shoulders, but she only
said, "I should have liked to have pleased you in this," and turned
coldly away. He had left without knowing the result of the interview;
but a few days later he received a letter from her stating that she had
allowed Susy to return to her aunt, and that she had resigned all claims
to her guardianship.

"It seemed to be a foregone conclusion," she wrote; "and although I
cannot think such a change will be for her permanent welfare, it is her
present WISH, and who knows, indeed, if the change will be permanent?
I have not allowed the legal question to interfere with my judgment,
although her friends must know that she forfeits any claim upon the
estate by her action; but at the same time, in the event of her suitable
marriage, I should try to carry out what I believe would have been Mr.
Peyton's wishes."

There were a few lines of postscript: "It seems to me that the change
would leave you more free to consult your own wishes in regard to
continuin