y means."

"No; but if you've got most of it--"

Masterman shot out of his seat. "Take care, Thor. I object to your way
of expressing yourself. It's offensive."

"I only mean, father, that if Mr. Willoughby saved the business--"

"He didn't do anything of the kind," Masterman said, sharply. "No one
knows better than he that I never wanted him at all."

But Thor ventured to speak up. "Didn't you tell mother one night in
Paris, when we were there in 1892, that his money might as well come to
you as go to the deuce? Mother said she hated business and didn't want
to have anything to do with it. She hoped you'd let the Willoughbys and
their money alone. Didn't that happen, father?"

If Thor was expecting his father to blanch and betray a guilty mind, he
was both disappointed and relieved. "Possibly. I've no recollection. I
was looking for some one to enter the business. He wasn't my ideal, the
Lord knows; and yet I might have said something about it--carelessly.
Why do you ask?"

The son tried to infuse his words with a special intensity as, looking
straight into his father's eyes, he said, "Because I--I remember the way
things happened at the time."

"Indeed? And may I ask what your memories lead you to infer? They've
clearly led you to infer something."

During the seconds in which father and son scrutinized each other Thor
felt himself backing down with a sort of spiritual cowardice. He didn't
want to accuse his father. He shrank from the knowledge that would have
justified him in doing so. To express himself with as little stress as
possible, he said, "They lead me to infer that we've some moral
responsibility toward Mr. Willoughby."

"Really? That's very interesting. Now, I should have said that if I'd
ever had any I'd richly worked it off." It was perhaps to glide away
from the points already raised that he asked: "Aren't you a little hasty
in looking for moral responsibility? Let me see! Who was it the last
time? Old Fay, wasn't it?"

Thor flushed, but he accepted the diversion. He even welcomed it. Such
glimpses as he got of his father's mind appalled him. For the present,
at any rate, he would force no issue that would verify his suspicions
and compel him to act upon them. Better the doubt. Better to believe
that Willoughby had been a spendthrift. He would have no difficulty as
to that, had it not been for those dogging memories of the little hotel
in the rue de Rivoli.

Besides, as he said to himself