brought
to a question of tender and pathetic interest only his selfish opinion
of the world and the weaknesses of mankind. The blood came to his
cheeks--with all his experienced self-control, he had not lost the
youthful trick of blushing--and he turned away from the window as if it
had breathed a reproach.

But ought he have even contented himself with destroying her
illusions--ought he not have gone farther and told her the whole truth?
Ought he not first have won her confidence--he remembered bitterly,
now, how she had intimated that she had no one to confide in--and,
after revealing her mother's history, have still pledged himself to
keep the secret from all others, and assisted her in her plan? It
would not have altered the state of affairs, except so far as she was
concerned; they could have combined together; his ready wit would have
helped him; and his sympathy would have sustained her; but--

How and in what way could he have told her? Leaving out the delicate
and difficult periphrase by which her mother's shame would have to be
explained to an innocent school-girl--what right could he have assumed
to tell it? As the guardian who had never counseled or protected her?
As an acquaintance of hardly an hour ago? Who would have such a right?
A lover--on whose lips it would only seem a tacit appeal to her
gratitude or her fears, and whom no sensitive girl could accept
thereafter? No. A husband? Yes! He remembered, with a sudden start,
what Pendleton had said to him. Good Heavens! Had Pendleton that idea
in his mind? And yet--it seemed the only solution.

A knock at his door was followed by the appearance of Mr. Woods. Mr.
Hathaway's portmanteau had come, and Mrs. Woods had sent a message,
saying that in view of the limited time that Mr. Hathaway would have
with his ward, Mrs. Woods would forego her right to keep him at her
side at dinner, and yield her place to Yerba. Paul thanked him with a
grave inward smile. What if he made his dramatic disclosure to her
confidentially over the soup and fish? Yet, in his constantly recurring
conviction of the girl's independence, he made no doubt she would have
met his brutality with unflinching pride and self-possession. He began
to dress slowly, at times almost forgetting himself in a new kind of
pleasant apathy, which he attributed to the odor of the flowers, and
the softer hush of twilight that had come on with the dying away of the
trade winds, and the restfu