ink it should, Miss Yerba. I
don't know what the colonel explained to you--doubtless, not the whole
truth, for he is not a man to praise himself; but, the fact is, the
bank was in difficulties at the time of that transfer, and, to make it,
he sacrificed his personal fortune, and, I think, awakened some of that
ill-feeling you have just noticed." He checked himself too late: he
had again lost not only his tact and self-control, but had nearly
betrayed himself. He was surprised that the girl's justifiable
ignorance should have irritated him. Yet she had evidently not
noticed, or misunderstood it, for she said, with a certain precision
that was almost studied:--

"Yes, I suppose it would have been a terrible thing to him to have been
suspected of misappropriating a Trust confided to him by parties who
had already paid him the high compliment of confiding to his care a
secret and a fortune."

Paul glanced at her quickly with astonishment. Was this ignorance, or
suspicion? Her manner, however, suddenly changed, with the charming
capriciousness of youth and conscious beauty. "He speaks of you in
this letter," she said, letting her dark eyes rest on him provokingly.

"That accounts for your lack of interest then," said Paul gayly,
relieved to turn a conversation fraught with so much danger.

"But he speaks very flatteringly," she went on. "He seems to be
another one of your admirers. I'm sure, Mr. Hathaway, after that scene
in the hotel parlor yesterday, YOU, at least, cannot complain of having
been misrepresented before ME. To tell you the truth, I think I hated
you a little for it."

"You were quite right," returned Paul. "I must have been insufferable!
And I admit that I was slightly piqued against YOU for the idolatries
showered upon you at the same moment by your friends."

Usually, when two young people have reached the point of confidingly
exchanging their first impressions of each other, some progress has
been made in first acquaintance. But it did not strike Paul in that
way, and Yerba's next remark was discouraging.

"But I'm rather disappointed, for all that. Colonel Pendleton tells me
you know nothing of my family or of the secret."

Paul was this time quite prepared, and withstood the girl's scrutiny
calmly. "Do you think," he asked lightly, "that even HE knows?"

"Of course he does," she returned quickly. "Do you suppose he would
have taken all that trouble you have just talked about if he