, he had remained in the library until the allotted time was
elapsed. He fidgeted from place to place, his mind heavy with distress
under the shadow that threatened to blight the life of his cherished
son. Finally, with a sense of relief he put out the lights and went to
his chamber. But he did not follow the further directions given him, for
he was not minded to go to bed. Instead, he drew the curtains closely
to make sure that no gleam of light could pass them, and then sat with a
cigar between his lips, which he did not smoke, though from time to time
he was at pains to light it. His thoughts were most with his son, and
ever as he thought of Dick, his fury waxed against the woman who had
enmeshed the boy in her plotting for vengeance on himself. And into his
thoughts now crept a doubt, one that alarmed his sense of justice. It
occurred to him that this woman could not have thus nourished a plan for
retribution through the years unless, indeed, she had been insane, even
as he had claimed--or innocent! The idea was appalling. He could not
bear to admit the possibility of having been the involuntary inflicter
of such wrong as to send the girl to prison for an offense she had not
committed. He rejected the suggestion, but it persisted. He knew the
clean, wholesome nature of his son. It seemed to him incredible that
the boy could have thus given his heart to one altogether undeserving.
A horrible suspicion that he had misjudged Mary Turner crept into his
brain, and would not out. He fought it with all the strength of him,
and that was much, but ever it abode there. He turned for comfort to the
things Burke had said. The woman was a crook, and there was an end
of it. Her ruse of spoliation within the law was evidence of her
shrewdness, nothing more.

Mary Turner herself, too, was in a condition utterly wretched, and for
the same cause--Dick Gilder. That source of the father's suffering was
hers as well. She had won her ambition of years, revenge on the man who
had sent her to prison. And now the joy of it was a torture, for the
puppet of her plans, the son, had suddenly become the chief thing in her
life. She had taken it for granted that he would leave her after he came
to know that her marriage to him was only a device to bring shame on
his father. Instead, he loved her. That fact seemed the secret of her
distress. He loved her. More, he dared believe, and to assert boldly,
that she loved him. Had he acted otherwise, the