en
introduced to me, and I know you never will be, and that what you told
me was true."

"Which part of what I told you?" The question escaped from him
instantly.

"That the others might come when they liked, but that you could not."

"Oh yes, yes." His expression altered to a sincere dejection; his
shoulders drooped, and his voice indicated supreme annoyance. "I might
have known someone would tell you! Who was it? Did they say why I--"

"On account of your quarrel with my father."

"My quarrel with your father!" he exclaimed; and his face lit with an
elated surprise; his shoulders straightened. He took a step nearer her,
and asked, eagerly: "Who told you that?"

"My father himself. He spoke of a Mr. Vanrevel whom he--disliked, and
whom I must not meet; and, remembering what you had said, of course I
knew that you were he."

"Oh!" Crailey's lips began to form a smile of such appealing and
inimitable sweetness that Voltaire would have trusted him; a smile
alto-gether rose-leaves. "Then I lose you," he said, "for my only chance
to know you was in keeping it hidden from you. And now you understand!"

"No," she answered, gravely, "I don't understand; that is what troubles
me. If I did, and believed you had the right of the difference, I could
believe it no sin that you should speak to me, should take me home now.
I think it is wrong not to act from your own understanding of things."

The young man set his expression as one indomitably fixed upon the
course of honor, cost what it might; and, in the very action, his
lurking pleasure in doing it hopped out in the flicker of a twinkle in
his eyes, and as instantly sought cover again--the flea in the rose-jar.

"Then you must ask some other," he said, firmly. "A disinterested person
should tell you. The difference was political in the beginning, but
became personal afterward; and it is now a quarrel which can never be
patched up, though, for my part, I wish that it could be. I can say no
more, because a party to it should not speak."

She met his level look squarely at last; and no man ever had a
more truthful pair of eyes than Crailey Gray, for it was his great
accomplishment that he could adjust his emotion, his reason, and
something that might be called his faith, to fit any situation in any
character.

"You may take me home," she answered. "I may be wrong, and even
disloyal; but I do not feel it so, now. You did a very brave thing
tonight to save him from loss