short. "Don't
let's speak or think of anything like that."

"It only occurred to me," Grant excused himself mildly, "that
if--nothing like that _did_ happen, you mightn't want to come back to
this country yourself, for a while. It's a queer sort of case. And you
see you went through West Point and got your lieutenancy as Max Doran.
If you weren't Max Doran, but somebody else, I wonder what they would do
about----"

"I shouldn't give them the trouble of doing anything," said Max quietly.
"I'd resign from the army. But there'll be other doors open, I hope. I
don't mean to fade out of existence because I'm not a Doran or a fellow
with money. I'll try and make something out of another name."

"And you'll succeed, of course," Edwin Reeves assured him. "I suppose it
was in Grant's mind that if this extraordinary story proved to be true,
and you should give up your name and your fortune to John and Rose
Doran's daughter, why you would in a way be giving up your country,
too. You say that the confession Mrs. Doran received was from a
Frenchwoman: that this person took the child of a relative, and
exchanged it for the Doran baby. If we are to believe that, it makes you
of French blood as well as French birth. Grant supposed, perhaps, that
this fact might change your point of view."

Max had not thought of it, and resented the suggestion which the two
seemed to be making: that he would no longer have the right to consider
himself an American. "But I don't feel French," he exclaimed. "I don't
see how I ever can."

"Yet you speak French almost like a Frenchman," said Grant. "We used to
tease you about it in school. Do you remember?"

Did he remember? And Jack Doran had called him "Frenchy." Always, it
seemed, he had been marching blindly toward this moment.

Nothing was settled at the end of the talk, except that the secret was
to be kept for the present. And Max learned that Rose had made an
informal will, leaving him all her jewellery, with the request that it
should be valued by experts and sold, he taking the money to "use as he
thought fit." She had made this will years ago, it seemed, directly
after Jack Doran's death, while her conscience was awake. Max guessed
what had been in her mind. She had wanted him to have something of his
own, in case he ever lost his supposed heritage. He was grateful to her
because, not loving him, she had nevertheless thought of his welfare and
tried to provide for it. Mr. Reeves knew som