t. My boy's an ass." He put his
hand on Jamie's shoulder. "You'll find some fine young fellow to marry
her yet, and she'll bring you--grandchildren."

"I may--I need hardly ask you to forget this?" said Jamie timidly,
and making hastily for the door.

"Of course; and she shall stay in her old home where she was bred from
a child, and, d----n 'em, my grandchildren shall go to see her
there"--But the door had closed.

"James Bowdoin, if my son, with his d----d snicker, were one half so
good a gentleman as that old clerk, I'd trust him with--with an earl's
daughter," said the old gentleman inconsequently, and violently
rubbing a tingling nose.

"I think you're right, governor," said James Bowdoin. "Did you notice
how spruced up and young the poor fellow was? I wish to goodness I
hadn't laughed, though. He might have married the girl. Why not? How
old is he?"

"Why not? Ask her. He may be forty, more or less."

"What a strange thing to have come into the old fellow's life! And we
thought it would give him something to care for! I never fancied he
loved her that way."

"I don't believe now he loves her so much _that_ way--as--as he loves
her," said old Mr. Bowdoin, as if vaguely. "She isn't worth him."

"She's really quite beautiful. I never saw a Spanish girl before with
hair of gold."

"Pirate gold," said old Mr. Bowdoin.

PART TWO: ROBBERY.

I.

No plummet ever sank so deep as Jamie sank the thoughts of those few
months. No oblivion more vast than where he buried it. No human will
so strong as that he bent upon it, bound it down with. No sin absolved
was ever so forgotten. One wonders if Jamie, at the day of judgment
even, will remember it. Perhaps 'twill then be no more the sin he
thought it. For Jamie's nature, like that of spiny plants, was
sensitive, delicate within, as his outer side was bent and rough; and
he fancied it, first, a selfishness; then, as his lonely fancy got to
brooding on it, an actual sin. James Bowdoin's unlucky laugh had
taught him how it seemed to others; and was not inordinate affection,
to the manifest injury of the object loved, a sin? Jamie felt it so;
and he had the Prayer Book's authority therefor. "Inordinate and
sinful affections,"--that is the phrase; both are condemned.

But he kept it all the closer from Mercedes. It did not grow less; he
had no heart to cease loving. Manlike, he was willing to face his God
with the sin, but not her. He sought to change t