g it? None whatever?"

"I cannot pay; I shrink from borrowing. The trust funds in my charge
are sacred--"

"Of course!" said she, astonished that he should name them in such a
connection. "Is there nothing else?"

"My creditor is Robert Ratman--or as he calls himself, and possibly is,
Roger Ingleton. As you know, he claims to be the elder brother of our
Roger, and I--"

"Yes, yes," said she; "Roger told me about that. He is your creditor?"

"He is. I got into his clutches in India, little guessing who he was,
and he is crushing me now. There is but one way, and one only, of
escaping him--and that way is, I fear, impossible, Rosalind."

"What is it?" said she, with pale face, knowing what was to come.

"He loves you. As my son-in-law he would be no longer my creditor."

She drew away her hand with a shudder.

"Father," said she, in a dry hard voice which startled him, "do you
really mean this?"

"Is it a time for jesting?" said he. "I ask nothing of you. I merely
state facts. You dislike him--there is an end of it. Only remember we
are not now dealing with Robert Ratman, but with an injured man who has
not had a fair chance. The good in him," continued the father, deluded
by the passive look on his daughter's face, and becoming suddenly warm
in his championship of the absent creditor, "has been smothered; but for
aught we know it may still be there. A wife--"

She stopped him with a peremptory motion of her hand.

"Please do not say anything more. Your debt--when does it fall due?"

"In a week or ten days, my child. Consider--"

She interrupted again.

"No more, please," she said, almost imploringly. "I will think what can
be done to help you in a week. Good-bye, dear father."

She stooped, with face as white as marble, and touched his forehead with
her cold lips.

"Loyal girl," said the father, when the door had closed behind her; "she
will stand by me yet. After all, Ratman has his good points--clever,
cheerful, good man of business--"

Here abruptly the soliloquy ended, and Captain Oliphant buried his face
in his hands, a miserable man.

To Rosalind, as she walked rapidly across the park, there came but one
thought. Her father--how could she help him? how could she save him,
not so much from his debts as from the depths into which they were
plunging him?

"My poor father," said she. "Only a man in desperate plight could think
of such a remedy. He never meant it. He does