ourage
slipping from her. "Jim didn't tell me. But of course I am
not--surprised."

He evidently experienced something of the emotion she had just
denied.

"No one seemed to have guessed it," he said. "But now everything is
plain. Poor girl!"

He fell into a fit of musing, which he finally broke to say:

"I thought you would go to see her. She sorely needs friends."

"She has--you," said Fanny in a smothered voice.

For the life of her she could not withhold that one lightning flash
out of her enveloping cloud.

He disclaimed her words with a swift gesture.

"I'm not worthy to claim her friendship, nor yours," he said humbly;
"but I hope you--sometime you may be able to forgive me, Fanny."

"I don't think I understand what you have come to tell me," she said
with difficulty.

"The village is ringing with the news. She wanted every one to know;
her father has come home."

"Her father!"

"Ah, you didn't guess, after all. I think we were all blind. Andrew
Bolton has come back to Brookville, a miserable, broken man."

"But you said--her father. Do you mean that Lydia Orr--"

"It wasn't a deliberate deception on her part," he interrupted
quickly. "She has always been known as Lydia Orr. It was her mother's
name."

Fanny despised herself for the unreasoning tumult of joy which surged
up within her. He could not possibly marry Andrew Bolton's daughter!

He was watching her closely.

"I thought perhaps, if she consented, I would marry Lydia Orr," he
forced himself to tell her. "I want you to know this from me, now. I
decided that her money and her position would help me.... I admired
her; I even thought at one time I--loved her. I tried to love her....
I am not quite so base as to marry without love.... But she knew. She
tried to save me.... Then her father--that wretched, ruined man came
to me. He told me everything.... Fanny, that girl is a saint!"

His eyes were inscrutable under their somber brows. The girl sitting
stiffly erect, every particle of color drained from her young face,
watched him with something like terror. Why was he telling her
this?--Why? Why?

His next words answered her:

"I can conceive of no worse punishment than having you think ill of
me." ... And after a pause: "I deserve everything you may be telling
yourself."

But coherent thought had become impossible for Fanny.

"Why don't you marry her?" she asked clearly.

"Oh, I asked her. I knew I had been a cad to both of you