ool!" he retorted, his face working. "It's only your word against
mine; and who has the most right here, I'd like to know?"

All this time some one was pushing heavily against the door from the
outside, and a woman was whimpering there. I stepped back, still facing
him, and flung it open. It was Mary, looking white and wild, and holding
a sealed letter in her hand.

"What is this? Why are you here, Algernon?" she asked, turning to the
captain.

"He was here to rob your father of another treasure besides yourself," I
said. "He is a thief, and I will proclaim him as such."

"A thief! How dare you?" she said, her face all aflame. "Do you know you
are speaking of my husband?"

"Husband!" I cried--"Husband!" And I leaned on a chair for support.

"Richard," she said, placing the letter on the table, "I brought this
that I might leave it for my father when he came in. You will see that
he has it, will you?--or if you go before his return, let him find it
when he comes."

Married! The room swam round; and as I stood there, dumb and sick, they
seemed to swim with it out at the door.

When I came to myself the place was still as death, save for the ticking
of the clock and the click of the failing fire. But there lay the
letter. Another moment, as it seemed to me, and her father had let
himself in and I had placed it in his hand. He read it half through
before he quite understood what had been inclosed in it--a narrow
printed slip of paper. Suddenly he unfolded that and carried it nearer
the light.

"Married!" he said. "Well, thank God for that! But--but--married, and to
him!"--and he fell forward on the table.

He didn't die. People don't mostly die of these shocks. The months went
on; the years went on; and though he'd never seen his daughter, nor
rightly knew where she was, he heard that her husband had an allowance
made him by his father after his gambling debts had been paid; but the
alderman had taken his head clerk into partnership, and there was an end
of the captain's going into the business.

My dear old father died and left me this house and his small savings. I
seldom went to the Hall, though I should have been welcome there. Four
times a year I lent a hand with the accounts for the sake of old
routine, and stayed to eat a little supper and drink a glass of the
famous claret, or to smoke a pipe with the old gentleman, who was
failing greatly. His daughter was never mentioned between us, and I
supposed he