n the stairs.

"Why, Sue!" she cried; and she flew down the steps, and threw her arms
around her friend's neck. "Oh, Sue, Sue!" she said, in that voice a
woman uses to let another woman know that she understands and
sympathizes utterly with her.

Suzette coldly undid her clasping arms. "Let me go, Louise."

"No, no! You shan't go. I want you--you must stay with us, now. I know
Matt doesn't believe at all in that dreadful report."

"That wouldn't be anything now, even if it were true. There's another
report--don't you know it?--in the paper this morning." Louise tried to
look unconscious in the slight pause Suzette made before she said: "And
your father has been saying my father is a thief."

"Oh, papa!" Louise wailed out.

It was outrageously unfair and ungrateful of them both; and Hilary gave
a roar of grief and protest. Suzette escaped from Louise, and before he
could hinder it, flashed by Hilary to the street door, and was gone.

XX.

The sorrow that turned to shame in other eyes remained sorrow to
Northwick's daughters. When their father did not come back, or make any
sign of being anywhere in life, they reverted to their first belief, and
accepted the fact of his death. But it was a condition of their grief,
that they must refuse any thought of guilt in him. Their love began to
work that touching miracle which is possible in women's hearts, and to
establish a faith in his honor which no proof of his dishonesty could
shake.

Even if they could have believed all the things those newspapers accused
him of, they might not have seen the blame that others did in his acts.
But as women, they could not make the fine distinctions that men make in
business morality, and as Northwick's daughters, they knew that he would
not have done what he did if it was wrong. Their father had borrowed
other people's money, intending to pay it back, and then had lost his
own, and could not; that was all.

With every difference of temperament they agreed upon this, and they
were agreed that it would be a sort of treason to his memory if they
encouraged the charges against him by making any change in their life.
But it was a relief to them, especially to Suzette, who held the purse,
when the changes began to make themselves, and their costly
establishment fell away, through the discontent and anxiety of this
servant and that, till none were left but Elbridge Newton and his wife.
She had nothing to do now but grieve for the