ominate her will, to
subdue her lips to his own, if he had really cared. Fortunately, he
didn't care, and so could seek her welfare with detachment.

Turning slowly, she stood grasping the back of the chair from which she
had risen. He always remembered afterward that it was a chair of which
the flowing curves and rich interlacings of design contrasted with her
subtly emphasized simplicity. He had once had the morbid curiosity to
watch, in an English law-court, the face and attitude of a woman--a
surgeon's wife--standing in the dock to be sentenced to death. It seemed
to him now that Olivia Guion stood like her--with the same resoluteness,
not so much desperate as slightly dazed.

"Wasn't it for something of that kind--something wrong with
estates--that Jack Berrington was sent to prison?"

The question took him unawares. "I--I don't remember."

"I do. I should think you would. The trial was in all the papers. It was
the Gray estate. He was Mrs. Gray's trustee. He ruined the whole Gray
family."

"Possibly." He did his best to speak airily. "In the matter of estates
there are all sorts of hitches that can happen. Some are worse than
others, of course--"

"I've seen his wife, Ada Berrington, once or twice, when I've been in
Paris. She lives there, waiting for him to come out of Singville. She
avoids her old friends when she can--but I've seen her."

"I think I remember hearing about them," he said, for the sake of saying
something; "but--"

"I should like to go and talk with my father. Would you mind waiting?"

She made as though she would pass him, but he managed to bar her way.

"I wouldn't do that if I were you, Miss Guion. If he's not well it'll
only upset him. Why not let everything be just as it is? You won't
regret it a year hence--believe me. In nine things out of ten you'd know
better than I; but this is the tenth thing, in which I know better than
you. Why not trust me--and let me have a free hand?"

"I'm afraid I must go to my father. If you'll be kind enough to wait,
I'll come back and tell you what he says. Then we shall know. Will you
please let me pass?"

He moved to one side. He thought again of the woman in the English
law-court. It was like this that she walked from the dock--erect,
unflinching, graceful, with eyes fixed straight before her, as though
she saw something in the air.

He watched her cross the hall to the foot of the staircase. There she
paused pensively. In a minute or two s