dine.

When he had gone she picked up the measure once more, and turned to Tom.

"Help me just to finish this, Tom," she said. "We must try to move in as
quickly as may be."

Tom silently took the other end of the tape, and they set to work again;
but all the enjoyment in the new house seemed quenched and destroyed
by that blast of calumny. They knew only too well that this was but the
beginning of troubles.

Raeburn, remembering his hasty speech, called Erica into the study the
moment he heard her return. He was still very pale, and with a curiously
rigid look about his face.

"I was right, you see, in my prophecy of rocks ahead," he exclaimed,
throwing down his pen. "You have come home to a rough time, Erica, and
to an overharassed father."

"The more harassed the father, the more reason that he should have a
child to help him," said Erica, sitting down on the arm of his chair,
and putting back the masses of white hair which hung over his forehead.

"Oh, child!" he said, with a sigh, "if I can but keep a cool head and a
broad heart through the years of trouble before us!"

"Years!" exclaimed Erica, dismayed.

"This affair may drag on almost indefinitely, and a personal strife is
apt to be lowering."

"Yes," said Erica, musingly, "to be libeled does set one's back up
dreadfully, and to be much praised humbles one to the very dust."

"What will the Fane-Smiths say to this? Will they believe it of me?"

"I can't tell," said Erica, hesitatingly.

"'He that's evil deemed is half hanged,'" said Raeburn bitterly. "Never
was there a truer saying than that."

"'Blaw the wind ne'er so fast, it will lown at the last'" quoted Erica,
smiling. "Equally true, PADRE MIO."

"Yes, dear," he said quietly, "but not in my life time. You see if I
let this pass, the lies will be circulated, and they'll say I can't
contradict them. If I bring an action against the fellow, people will
say I do it to flaunt my opinions in the face of the public. As your
hero Livingstone once remarked, 'Isn't it interesting to get blamed for
everything?' However, we must make the best of it. How about the new
house? When can we settle in? I feel a longing for that study with its
twenty-two feet o' length for pacing!"

"What are your engagements?" she asked, taking up a book from the table.
"Eleventh, Newcastle; 12th, Nottingham; 13th and 14th, Plymouth. Let
me see, that will bring you home on Monday, the 15th, and will leave us
three clear d