ure this transaction
is fair and square and above-board."

A silence followed, which appeared to Richard protracted to the point
of agitation. He became almost distressingly conscious of the man's
still, bronzed, resolute face on the one hand, of the woman's mobile,
vivid, yet equally resolute face on the other, divining far more to be
at stake than he had clear knowledge of. Tired and excited, his
impatience touched on anger.

"Say yes, Mary," he cried impulsively, "say yes. I don't see how
anybody can want to refuse Uncle Roger anything."

Miss Cathcart's eyes grew moist. She turned and kissed the boy.

"I don't think--perhaps--Dickie, that I quite see either," she answered
very gently.

"Mary, you know what you've just said?" Ormiston's tone was stern. "You
understand this little comedy? It means business. This time you've got
to go the whole hog or none."

She looked straight at him, and drew her breath in a long half-laughing
sigh.

"Oh, dear me! what a plague of a hurry you are in!" she said.
"Well--then--then--I suppose I must--it is hardly a graceful
expression, but it is of your choosing, not of mine--I suppose I must
go the whole hog."

Roger Ormiston rose, treading the fallen tulips under foot. And
Richard, watching him, beheld that which called to his remembrance, not
the hopeless and impotent battle under the black polished sky of his
last night's dream, but the gallant stories he had heard, earlier last
night, of the battles of Sobraon and Chillianwallah, of the swift
dangers of sport, and large daring of travel. Here he beheld--so it
seemed to his boyish thought--the aspect of a born conqueror, of the
man who can serve and wait long for the good he desires, and who
winning it, lays hold of it with fearless might. And this, while
causing Richard an exquisite delight of admiration, caused him also a
longing to share those splendid powers so passionate that it amounted
to actual pain.

Mary Cathcart's hand slid from under his hand. She too rose to her
feet.

"Then you have actually cared for me all along, all these years,"
Ormiston declared in fierce joy.

"Of course--who else could I care for? And--and--you've loved me,
Roger, all the while?"

And Ormiston answered "Yes,"--speaking the truth, though with a
difference. There had been interludes that had contributed somewhat
freely to the peopling of that same locked-up room. But it is possible
for a man to love many times, yet always love o