women, that Mrs. Ashwood's
head was about as level as it was pretty.

The next morning found her more thoughtful and subdued, and when her
brother came upon her sitting on the veranda, while the party were
preparing to return, she was reading a newspaper slip that she had taken
from her porte-monnaie, with a face that was partly shadowed.

"What have you struck there, Conny?" said her brother gayly. "It looks
too serious for a recipe."

"Something I should like you to read some time, Jack," she said, lifting
her lashes with a slight timidity, "if you would take the trouble. I
really wonder how it would impress you."

"Pass it over," said Jack Shipley good-humoredly, with his cigar between
his lips. "I'll take it now."

She handed him the slip and turned partly away; he took it, glanced at
it sideways, turned it over, and suddenly his look grew concentrated,
and he took the cigar from his lips.

"Well," she said playfully, turning to him again. "What do you think of
it?"

"Think of it?" he said with a rising color. "I think it's infamous! Who
did it?"

She stared at him, then glanced quickly at the slip. "What are you
reading?" she said.

"This, of course," he said impatiently. "What you gave me." But he was
pointing to THE OTHER SIDE of the newspaper slip.

She took it from him impatiently and read for the first time the
printing on the reverse side of the article she had treasured so long.
It was the concluding paragraph of an apparently larger editorial. "One
thing is certain, that a man in Daniel Harcourt's position cannot afford
to pass over in silence accusations like the above, that affect not only
his private character, but the integrity of his title to the land that
was the foundation of his fortune. When trickery, sharp practice, and
even criminality in the past are more than hinted at, they cannot be
met by mere pompous silence or allusions to private position, social
prestige, or distinguished friends in the present."

Mrs. Ashwood turned the slip over with scornful impatience, a pretty
uplifting of her eyebrows and a slight curl of her lip. "I suppose none
of those people's beginnings can bear looking into--and they certainly
should be the last ones to find fault with anybody. But, good gracious,
Jack! what has this to do with you?"

"With me?" said Shipley angrily. "Why, I proposed to Clementina last
night!"

CHAPER IX.

The wayfarers on the Tasajara turnpike, whom Mr. Daniel Harc