d them. You must do her
justice there--I trust she may never know it. Claude promised me--"

"I know, I know--it was with this understanding," he interrupted, "that
he confided to me the extent of his indiscretion, for which I have rated
him soundly, I assure you. Evelyn is not to know that you overheard
them. This is the compact--a very sensible and politic one on your part,
under the circumstances, for Evelyn, we all know, is, excuse me my dear,
the devil, when fairly aroused. Now, as to this overhearing of
yours--might not your mind, laboring under recent coma, and a sort of
mental mirage as it were, have had a tendency to magnify and only
partially comprehend the conversation thus suddenly forced upon your
attention? For I understand you were unable to make yourself heard at
all, or even to give signs of life when the curtains of your bed were
lifted by the interlocutors."

"This last is true--but that I could not have been mistaken, Claude's
own admissions confirm. He denied nothing that I suggested--much was
left by me unquestioned."

"Yes," catching wildly at this straw, "he finds himself quite in the
dark still, I perceive--as to the accusations brought against him;
suppose you make your charges one by one, as it were in the shape of
specifications?"

"There are no charges, no accusations brought--nothing of that sort," I
said, proudly; "and I must entreat that from this hour, Mr. Bainrothe,
this subject be dropped between us utterly. It is wholly unprofitable,
believe me."

"You are a person of extraordinary obduracy," he said, "for one of your
years. I should like to know how much the Stanbury influence has had to
do with strengthening your unwise, unamiable, and stiff-necked
resolution! If I were Claude Bainrothe, I should lay heavy damages
against you in the courts of law, for your unjustifiable evasion of a
formal contract--one your father sanctioned, one of which all your
friends are and were cognizant and proud, and which has subjected him,
in its rupture, to so much distress and mortification; nay, even as I
can prove, pecuniary loss."

"If _money_ can repay your son Claude, for any wrong I have done him, he
is welcome to a portion of mine," I said, deeply disgusted, "without
intervention of law--painful exposure of any kind. I cherish for him,
however, even yet, too much regard and respect to believe him capable of
such proceedings. The idea is worthy of the mind it springs from--worthy
of the a