your ridicule, I can but offer
you an apology, sir. If I have accepted a favor I can neither renounce
nor return, I must take the consequences to myself, and even beg YOU,
sir, to put up with them."

Remorseful as Paul felt, there was a singular resemblance between the
previous reproachful pose of George and this present attitude of his
master, as if the mere propinquity of personal sacrifice had made them
alike, that struck him with a mingled pathos and ludicrousness. But he
said warmly, "It is I who must apologize, my dear colonel. I am not
laughing at your conclusions, but at this singular coincidence with a
discovery I have made."

"As how, sir?"

"I find in the report of the Chief of the Police for the year 1850 that
Kate Howard was under the protection of a man named Arguello."

The colonel's exaggeration instantly left him. He stared blankly at
Paul. "And you call this a laughing matter, sir?" he said sternly, but
in his more natural manner.

"Perhaps not, but I don't think, if you will allow me to say so, my
dear colonel, that YOU have been treating the whole affair very
seriously. I left you two months ago utterly opposed to views which
you are now treating as of no importance. And yet you wish me to
believe that nothing has happened, and that you have no further
information than you had then. That this is so, and that you are
really no nearer the FACTS, I am willing to believe from your ignorance
of what I have just told you, and your concern at it. But that you
have not been influenced in your JUDGMENT of what you do know, I cannot
believe?" He drew nearer Pendleton, and laid his hand upon his arm.
"I beg you to be frank with me, for the sake of the person whose
interests I see you have at heart. In what way will the discovery I
have just made affect them? You are not so far prejudiced as to be
blind to the fact that it may be dangerous because it seems
corroborative."

Pendleton coughed, rose, took his stick, and limped up and down the
room, finally dropping into an armchair by the window, with his cane
between his knees, and the drooping gray silken threads of his long
moustache curled nervously between his fingers.

"Mr. Hathaway, I WILL be frank with you. I know nothing of this blank
affair--blank it all!--but what I've told you. Your discovery may be a
coincidence, nothing more. But I HAVE been influenced,
sir,--influenced by one of the most perfect goddess-like--yes, sir; one
o