ow that I would
rather--oh, a hundred times!--wound myself than wound you! You must
listen, then, when I tell you that this girl is not worthy of you; when
I tell you that this note proves it!"

"Read it!" he commanded, in a hoarse voice. "Read it, then!"

"'Lord Vernon will be deeply grateful,'" she read, "'if he is not
mentioned in connection with to-day's adventure.' To-day's
adventure--when he kicked Jax away from her. Can you doubt? Can you be
so stupid as to doubt? These Americans--they have no sense of honour!"

He turned to the window without answering, but his face was drawn and
white.

CHAPTER XVIII

Man's perfidy

To Archibald Rushford, sitting ruminant in his room, staring absently
out at the dunes and the sea, his paper forgotten, there entered
presently Susie--a rather subdued Susie, as he noted from the corner of
his eye--who drew up a chair very close to his and sat down and propped
her chin in her hands and looked up at him.

It came to him in a flash of revelation that, did she have a mother, it
was to her she would have gone at this moment, and not to him, and his
eyes were a little misty as he looked down at her. That she and her
sister should have grown, motherless, to such sweet, triumphant
womanhood struck him in this instant as a kind of miracle--he had never
thought of it before. He had taken their beauty, their wit, their
sanity, as matters of course; he had never looked at them, clearly, from
the outside; he had never quite thoroughly appreciated them. They had
come this far, guideless, in the journey of life, and had done well and
bravely; but now Susie, at least, had reached a point in the path where
she needed help and counsel. She had come to him for it and he must give
her the best he had.

"Dad," she began, a little tremulously, "would you mind so _very_ much
if I should m-marry and live in Europe? Of course," she added, hastily,
to break the force of the blow, "you would come over very often and stay
with us, and we would go over very often to see you."

"So he _has_ spoken to you, has he?" laughed her father. "He told me he
hadn't."

"Spoken! You know about it? Oh, dad, what do you mean?"

"I mean that a certain William Frederick Albert, of Markeld--I believe
that's his name--or most of it--was in here a while ago and had the
impudence to ask me to give you to him."

"Oh!" gasped Susie, with flaming cheeks, and sank back in her chair and
I dare say cried a littl