better not be the ones
responsible--especially since it might easily be traced to us. I think
it's usually better to keep out of things when there's any doubt."

"Yes," he said, meditating. "I never knew any harm to come of people's
sticking to their own affairs."

But as he and his wife became silent for a time, musing in the
firelight, their daughter's special convictions were far from coinciding
with theirs, although she, likewise, was silent--a singularity they
should have observed. So far were they from a true comprehension of her,
they were unaware that she had more than a casual, young-cousinly
interest in Julia Atwater's engagement and in those possible
consequences to Noble Dill just sketched with some intentional
exaggeration. They did not even notice her expression when Mr. Atwater
snapped on the light, in order to read; and she went quietly out of the
library and up the stairs to her own room.

* * * * *

On the floor, near her bed, where Patty Fairchild had left her coat and
hat, Florence made another discovery. Two small, folded slips of paper
lay there, dropped by Miss Fairchild when she put on her coat in the
darkening room. They were the replies to Patty's whispered questions in
the game on the steps--the pledged Truth, written by Henry Rooter and
Herbert Atwater on their sacred words and honours. The infatuated pair
had either overestimated Patty's caution, or else each had thought she
would so prize his little missive that she would treasure it in a tender
safety, perhaps pinned upon her blouse (at the first opportunity) over
her heart. It is positively safe to say that neither of the two
veracities would ever have been set upon paper had Herbert and Henry any
foreshadowing that Patty might be careless; and the partners would have
been seized with the utmost horror could they have conceived the
possibility of their trustful messages ever falling into the hands of
the relentless creature who now, without an instant's honourable
hesitation, unfolded and read them.

"_Yes if I got to tell the truth I know I have got pretty eyes_,"
Herbert had unfortunately written. "I _am glad you think so too Patty
because your eyes are too Herbert Illingsworth Atwater, Jr._"

And Mr. Henry Rooter had likewise ruined himself in a coincidental
manner:

"_Well Patty my eyes are pretty but suppose I would like to trade with
yours because you have beautiful eyes also, sure as my name