nd a moment since. No, there's nothing sudden about it,
though I don't suppose these things usually take a great deal of time,"
Matt ended, philosophically.

Wade left the dangerous ground he found himself on. He asked, "And your
family, do they know of your--feeling?"

"Not in the least!" Matt answered, radiantly. "It will come on them like
a thunder-clap! If it ever comes on them at all," he added,
despondently.

Wade had his own belief that there was no cause for despondency in the
aspect of the affair that Matt was looking at. But he could not offer to
share his security with Matt, who continued to look serious, and said,
presently, "I suppose my father might think it complicated his relation
to the Northwicks' trouble, and I have thought that, too. It makes it
very difficult. My father is to be considered. You know, Wade, I think
there are very few men like my father?"

"There are none, Matt!" said Wade.

"I don't mean he's perfect; and I think his ideas are wrong, most of
them. But his conduct is as right as the conduct of any quick-tempered
man ever was in the world. I know him, and I don't believe a son ever
loved his father more; and so I want to consider him all I can."

"Ah, I know that, my dear fellow!"

"But the question is, how far can I consider him? There are times," said
Matt, and he reddened, and laughed consciously, "when it seems as if I
couldn't consider him at all; the times when I have some faint hope that
she will listen to me, or won't think me quite a brute to speak to her
of such a thing at such a moment. Then there are other times when I
think he ought to be considered to the extreme of giving her up
altogether; but those are the times when I know that I shall never have
her to _give_ up. Then it's an easy sacrifice."

"I understand," said Wade, responding with a smile to Matt's
self-satire.

Matt went on, and as he talked he sometimes walked to Wade's window and
looked out, sometimes he stopped and confronted him across his desk.
"It's cowardly, in a way, not to speak at once--to leave her to suffer
it out to the end alone; but I think that's what I owe to my father. No
real harm can come to her from waiting. I risk the unfair chance I might
gain by speaking now when she sorely needs help; but if ever she came to
think she had given herself through that need--No, it wouldn't do! My
father can do more for her if he isn't hampered by my feeling, and
Louise can be her friend--What do