sant-spoken young person."

"You didn't happen to find out what my father wrote to her?"

"Of her own accord she offered to show me his letter."

"Well, and what did it say?"

"I didn't read it, sir."

"You didn't read it?" Mr. Sam repeated in slow astonishment.

"No, sir. I felt it wasn't fair to her," said Mr. Benny.

His employer regarded him for a moment with sourly meditative eyes.

"You had best show her in at once," he commanded sharply.

He reseated himself, and did not rise when Hester entered, but slewed his
chair around, nodded gloomily in response to her slight bow, and, tapping
his knees with a paper-knife, treated her to a long, deliberate stare.

"Take a seat, please."

Hester obeyed with a quiet 'Thank you.'

"You have come, I believe, in answer to a letter of my father's?
Might I ask you what he said, exactly?"

Hester's hand went towards her pocket, but paused. She had taken an
instant aversion from this man.

"My father," he went on, noting her hesitation, "has since died suddenly,
as you know. His affairs are in some confusion, of course."
This was untrue, but Mr. Sam had no consciousness of telling a lie.
The phrase was commonly used of dead men's affairs. "In this matter of
your engagement, for instance, I am moving in the dark. I can find no
record of it among his papers."

"I answered him, sir; but my letter arrived, it seems, after his death.
Mr. Benny replied to it."

"Yes, to be sure, I saw your letter, but it did not tell me how far the
negotiations had gone."

"You are one of the Managers, sir?"

"Well, not precisely; but you will find that makes little difference.
I am to be placed on the Board as my father's successor."

"The offer was quite definite," said Hester calmly. "I would show you the
letter, but some parts of it are private."

"Now why in the world was she ready to show it to Benny?" he asked
himself. Aloud he said, "You were a friend, then, of my father's?
Is it for him, may I ask, that you wear mourning?"

"No, sir; for my own father. Mr. Rosewarne and he were friends--oh, for
many years. I asked about it once, when I was quite a girl, and why
Mr. Rosewarne came to visit us once every year as he did. My father told
me that it had begun in a quarrel, when they were young men; it may have
been when my father served in the army, in the barracks at Warwick.
I don't remember that he said so, yet somehow I have always had an idea
that the quarrel w