y has ever
countenanced or even suspected such aspirations, it is utterly false,
and grateful as I am for your kindness, I could not accept it."

"Look here, Trent," returned Revelstoke curtly, yet laying his hand on
the young man's shoulder not unkindly. "All that is YOUR private affair,
which, as I told you, I don't interfere with. The other is a question
between Mr. Dingwall and myself of your comparative value. It won't hurt
you with ANYBODY to know how high we've assessed it. Don't spoil a good
thing!"

Grateful even in his uncertainty, Randolph could only thank him and
withdraw. Yet this fateful forcing of his hand in a delicate question
gave him a new courage. It was with a certain confidence now in his
capacity as HER friend and qualified to advise HER that he called at Mr.
Dingwall's the evening she arrived. It struck him that in the Dingwalls'
reception of him there was mingled with their formality a certain
respect.

Thanks to this, perhaps, he found her alone. She seemed to him more
beautiful than his recollection had painted her, in the development that
maturity, freedom from restraint, and time had given her. For a moment
his new, fresh courage was staggered. But she had retained her youthful
simplicity, and came toward him with the same naive and innocent
yearning in her clear eyes that he remembered at their last meeting.
Their first words were, naturally, of their great secret, and Randolph
told her the whole story of his unexpected and startling meeting with
the captain, and the captain's strange narrative, of his undertaking the
journey with him to recover his claim, establish his identity, and, as
Randolph had hoped, restore to her that member of the family whom she
had most cared for. He recounted the captain's hesitation on arriving;
his own journey to the rectory; the news she had given him; the
reason of his singular behavior; his return to London; and the second
disappearance of the captain. He read to her the letter he had received
from him, and told her of his hopeless chase to the docks only to find
him gone. She listened to him breathlessly, with varying color, with
an occasional outburst of pity, or a strange shining of the eyes, that
sometimes became clouded and misty, and at the conclusion with a calm
and grave paleness.

"But," she said, "you should have told me all."

"It was not my secret," he pleaded.

"You should have trusted me."

"But the captain had trusted ME."

She lo