e turned to lead in her bosom. She was
cold from head to feet, except that in her cheeks bright spots burned.
Her father looked at her with anguished eyes. He noted the pallor and
the hectic spots.

"Winnie, I can't let you throw yourself away on such a fellow as Buck
Badger! You must put him out of your thoughts. He is unworthy of you. I
thought he was an honorable young man, and now I find I was mistaken. I
shall make further inquiries, but those I have made to-night are enough
to condemn him. You must not see him again, and you must have nothing
further to do with him. I want you to tell him just what I have said--or
I shall tell him myself, and give him a piece of my mind in the
bargain."

Winnie knew that she was trembling as with an ague, but she tried to
hold her emotions in check that she might fight for herself and for
Buck. Everything was at stake now, she felt, for she loved Badger with
an absorbing love.

"You have simply been deceived, father," she insisted. "I know it. Like
many Yale men, Buck has been a little wild at times. He knows it and
acknowledges it But as for that night and that excursion, that isn't
true, I don't care who told you. Buck has a good many enemies, and some
of them have come to you with this story. Tell me who told you, in the
first place."

"It wouldn't be right just now for me to give his name. And it is not
needed. Connelly admitted that Badger had been there often, and had gone
from there drunk the night before the steamer excursion. He remembered
it, because the story of the fire and of Lynn's death, and the drugging
of Badger, was in the papers, and he could not forget the time. I wish
it wasn't true, Winnie; but it is true. It will be hard, perhaps, for
you to give him up, but better that than for him to make you unhappy, as
he is sure to do."

"Hard!" she mentally cried. "It will kill me!"

He looked at her pathetically, yet with decision and firmness.

"Make up your mind that he is unworthy. I will bring you more proofs, if
necessary. But I, first of all, lay on you my commands. You must not see
him again, except to tell him that he cannot call again, and that you
cannot be anything to each other hereafter but the merest
acquaintances."

Man of affairs and of the world as he was, Fairfax Lee had not yet
learned that love cannot be made to come and go at will. If the little
god is blind, he is also stubborn, and has a way of his own.

"I can't, father!" Winnie beg