wish you would let me speak to you in confidence. I
want to ask your help in a most delicate matter. Not, of course, about
my step-daughter, though I shall have to mention her. It is something
quite personal to myself. If I could hope that you wouldn't think it
tiresome--I have a special reason for appealing to you.'

He would gladly, said Harvey, be of any use he could.

'I want to speak to you about painful things,' pursued his hostess,
with an animation and emphasis which made her more like the lady of
Fitzjohn Avenue. 'You know everything--except my own position, and that
is what I wish to explain to you. I won't go into details. I will only
say that a few years ago my husband made over to me a large sum of
money--I had none of my own--and that it still belongs to me. I say
belongs to me; but there is my trouble. I fear I have no right whatever
to call it mine. And there are people who have suffered such dreadful
losses. Some of them you know. There was a family named Abbott. I
wanted to ask you about them. Poor Mr. Abbott--I remember reading----'

She closed her eyes for an instant, and the look upon her face told
that this was no affectation of an anguished memory.

'It was accident,' Rolfe hastened to say. 'The jury found it accidental
death.'

'But there was the loss--I read it all. He had lost everything. Do tell
me what became of his family. Someone told me they were friends of
yours.'

'Happily they had no children. There was a small life-insurance. Mrs
Abbott used to be a teacher, and she is going to take that up again.'

'Poor thing! Is she quite young?'

'Oh, about thirty, I should say.'

'Will she go into a school?'

'No. Private pupils at her own house. She has plenty of courage, and
will do fairly well, I think.'

'Still, it is shocking that she should have lost all--her husband, too,
just at that dreadful time. This is what I wanted to say, Mr. Rolfe. Do
you think it would be possible to ask her to accept something----? I do
so feel,' she hurried on, 'that I ought to make some sort of
restitution--what I can--to those who lost everything. I am told that
things are not quite hopeless; something may be recovered out of the
wreck some day. But it will be such a long time, and meanwhile people
are suffering so. And here am I left in comfort--more than comfort. It
isn't right; I couldn't rest till I did something. I am glad to say
that I have been able to help a little here and there, but only