rybody might hear it without fear that Jack or Rose
would be blamed. That was the great advantage. There need be no
whisperings and mysteries. And once the tale was told, there would be no
going back from it.

The story which fixed his imagination and inspired him to martyrdom
might have made a plot for some old-fashioned melodrama, but Max began
to realize that there was nothing in fiction so incredible as the things
which happen in life: things one reads about any day in newspapers, yet
which in a novel would be laughed at by critics. He would say to Edwin
Reeves that, shortly before her death, Rose had learned through the
dying confession of a Frenchwoman who had nursed her in childbirth that
her girl baby had been changed for a boy, born about the same time to a
relative of the nurse; that hearing this story she had intended to write
Max, and ask him to go to France to prove or disprove its truth, but
that she had been struck down before summoning courage to break the
news. Edwin Reeves would then understand Rose's anxiety to see Max; and
he would keep the secret, at least until the girl was found. As for what
ought to be done in the case of not finding her, or learning without
doubt that she was dead, Max thought he might take the lawyer's advice
as a friend of the Dorans, as a legal man, and as a man of the world.
Perhaps, if in Edwin Reeves's judgment silence would in that event be
justified, Max might accept this verdict.

There was that one grain of hope for the future--if it could be called
hope. But there was another person besides Edwin Reeves and Edwin
Reeves's son (Max's best friend of old days) who must be told at once
how little claim he had to the Doran name and fortune. That person was
Billie Brookton.

Max had dimly expected opposition from Edwin Reeves, whose advice might
be what Rose Doran's had been: to give money, and let everything remain
as it had been. It was somewhat to his surprise that the lawyer, after
listening in silence, agreed that there was just one thing to do, if the
girl still lived. Grant (who was with him in their private office by
Max's wish), though more demonstrative, more openly sympathetic, held
the same opinion.

Max ought to have been glad of this encouragement, but somehow, shaming
himself for it, he felt a dull sense of injury, especially where Grant
was concerned. Grant exclaimed that it was horribly hard lines, and that
old Max was the splendid fellow everybody had