asked.

Ramon Hamilton smiled, and his eyes met and held hers.

"We only want each other," he said quietly.

"But it seems so very precipitate!" the clergyman urged, turning as if
for moral support to the impassive figure of Henry Blaine. "So soon
after the shadow of tragedy has crossed this threshold! What will
people say?"

A little vagrant breeze, like a lost, unseasonable butterfly, came in
at the open window and stirred the filmy curtain, bearing on its soft
breath the odor of narcissus from the bloom-laden window-box.

"Oh, Doctor Franklin!" cried the girl, impulsively. "Don't talk of
tragedy just now! Spring is so near, and we love each other so! If
he--my dear, dead father--can hear, he will understand, and wish it to
be so!"

"As you will." The minister rose. "I gave you your name, Anita. I
consecrated your father's soul to Heaven, and his body to the dust,
and I will give his daughter in marriage to the man he chose for her
protector, whenever it is your will. But, Mr. Blaine, what do you say?
You seem to have more influence over Miss Lawton than I, although I
can scarcely understand it. Don't you agree with me that the world
will talk?"

"I do!" responded Henry Blaine fervently. "And I say--let it! It can
say of these two children only what I do--bless you, both! Sorrow and
suffering and tragedy have taken their quota of these young lives--now
let a little happiness and joy and sunshine and love in upon the
circumspect gloom you would still cast about them! You ministers are
steeped in the spiritual misery of the world, the doctors in the
physical; but we crime-specialists are forced to drink of it to its
dregs, physical, mental, moral, spiritual! And there is so much in
this tainted, sin-ridden world of ours that is beautiful and pure and
happy and holy, if we will but give it a chance!"

Doctor Franklin coughed, in a severely condemnatory fashion.

"Now that I have learned your opinion, in a broad, general way, Mr.
Blaine, I can understand your point of view in regard to that young
criminal, Charles Pennold, when at the time of the trial you used your
influence to have him paroled in your custody, instead of being sent
to prison, where he belonged."

"Exactly." Blaine's tone was dry. "I firmly believe that there are
many more young boys and men in our prisons, who should in reality be
in hospitals, or in sheltering, uplifting, sympathetic hands, than
there are criminals unpunished. And you, wit