ruel. Nevertheless, he stopped and looked at her.

"That's a queer stone you have there," he said, in a tone which she
recognized as coldly and ostentatiously civil.

"Yes," she replied, without looking up; "it's the outcrop of that mine."
She handed it to him as if to obviate any further remark. "I thought you
had seen it before."

"The outcrop," he repeated dryly. "That is--it--it--it is the indication
or sign of something important that's below it--isn't it?"

Louise shrugged her shoulders sceptically. "It don't follow. It's just
as likely to cover rubbish, after you've taken the trouble to look."

"Thanks," he said, with measured gentleness, and passed quietly out of
the room.

The moon had already risen when Bradley, with his brierwood pipe,
preceded Richardson upon the veranda. The latter threw his large frame
into Louise's rocking-chair near the edge of the abyss; Bradley, with
his own chair tilted against the side of the house after the national
fashion, waited for him to speak. The absence of Mainwaring and the
stimulus of Mrs. Bradley's graciousness had given the banker a certain
condescending familiarity, which Bradley received with amused and
ironical tolerance that his twinkling eyes made partly visible in the
darkness.

"One of the things I wanted to talk to you about, Bradley, was that old
affair of the advance you asked for from the Bank. We did not quite see
our way to it then, and, speaking as a business man, it isn't really a
matter of business now; but it has lately been put to me in a light that
would make the doing of it possible--you understand? The fact of the
matter is this: Sir Robert Mainwaring, the father of the young
fellow you've got in your house, is one of our directors and
largest shareholders, and I can tell you--if you don't suspect it
already--you've been lucky, Bradley--deucedly lucky--to have had him in
your house and to have rendered him a service. He's the heir to one
of the largest landed estates in his country, one of the oldest county
families, and will step into the title some day. But, ahem!" he coughed
patronizingly, "you knew all that! No? Well, that charming wife of
yours, at least, does; for she's been talking about it. Gad, Bradley, it
takes those women to find out anything of that kind, eh?"

The light in Bradley's eyes and his pipe went slowly out together.

"Then we'll say that affair of the advance is as good as settled. It's
Sir Robert's wish, you understa