of course I make no
promises about it at all. If there _has_ been any injustice, it was of
course done without my father's knowledge. I have no _idea_ what he will
do about it, but whatever he decides will of course be right."

The man turned back to her, hardly as if he had heard.

"The trouble is," he said, in an odd voice, harder than she had supposed
him to possess, "I didn't trust you. I--"

"Really that's of no consequence. I'm not concerned in it at--"

"I was sure all the time you would--be willing to do it," he went on, in
the same troubled way. "I was _sure_. And yet last night I went off and
spoke to somebody else about it--a man who has influence with
MacQueen--John Farley--a--a sort of saloonkeeper. Corinne is back at
work this morning."

The girl struggled against an absurd sense of defeat. She wished
now--oh, _how_ she wished!--that she had gone away immediately after
giving him mamma's and papa's cards....

"Oh!" she said, quite flatly.... "Well--in that case--there is no more
to be said."

But there he seemed to differ with her. "I'd give a good deal," he said
slowly, "if I'd only waited.... Could you let me say how sorry I am--"

"Please don't apologize to me! I've told you before that I--I _detest_
apologies...."

"I was not apologizing to you exactly," said V. Vivian, with a kind of
little falter.

"I--haven't anything to do with it, I've said! It's all purely a
business matter--purely!" And because, being a woman, she had been
interested in the personal side of all this from the beginning, she
could not forbear adding, with indignation: "I can't _imagine_ why you
ever thought of coming to me, in the first place."

"Why I ever thought of it?" he repeated, looking down at her as much as
to ask whom on earth should he come to then.

"If you had a complaint to make, why didn't you go direct to my father?"

"Ah, but I don't know your father, you see."

"Oh!... And you consider that you do know me?"

The man's right hand, which rested upon the pilaster, seemed to shake a
little.

"Well," he said, hesitatingly, "we've been through some trouble
together...."

Then was heard the loud scraping of shovels, and the merry cackle of the
old negro, happy because others toiled in the glad morning, while he did
not. Cally Heth's white glove rested on Mr. Beirne's polished
balustrade, and her piquant lashes fell.

She desired to go away now, but she could not go, on any such remark as
that. S