would have held out readily enough, had he
needed assistance in misfortune, slunk hastily into a pocket. For he who
climbs will lose more friends than the ne'er-do-well. Some may account
this to human nature for righteousness and others quite the contrary:
for jealousy, like love, lies hidden in unsuspected corners.

Juliette de Gemosac had been quite different to Loo since learning his
story. Miriam alone remained unchanged. He had accused her of failing to
rise superior to arbitrary social distinctions, and now, standing
behind her in the fire-lit dining-room of the rectory, he retracted
that accusation once and for all time in his own heart, though her
justification came from a contrary direction to that from which it might
have been expected.

Miriam alone remained a friend--and nothing else, he added, bitterly, in
his own heart. And she seemed to assume that their friendship, begun
in face of social distinctions, should never have to suffer from that
burthen.

"I should like to hear," she repeated, seeing that he was silent, "all
that has happened since you went away; all that you may care to tell
me."

"My heritage, you mean?"

She moved in her seat but did not look round. She had laid aside her hat
on coming into the house, and as she sat, leaning forward with her
hands clasped together in her lap, gazing thoughtfully at the fire which
glowed blue and white for the salt water that was in the drift-wood, her
hair, loosened by the wind, half concealed her face.

"Yes," she answered, slowly.

"Do you know what it is--my heritage?" lapsing, as he often did when
hurried by some pressing thought, into a colloquialism half French.

She shook her head, but made no audible reply.

"Do you suspect what it is?" he insisted.

"I may have suspected, perhaps," she admitted, after a pause.

"When? How long?"

She paused again. Quick and clever as he was, she was no less so. She
weighed the question. Perhaps she found no answer to it, for she turned
toward the door that stood open and looked out into the hall. The light
of the lamp there fell for a moment across her face.

"I think I hear them returning," she said.

"No," he retorted, "for I should hear them before you did. I was brought
up at sea. Do not answer the question, however, if you would rather not.
You ask what has happened since I went away. A great many things have
happened which are of no importance. Such things always happen, do they
not? But one