her of her brows,
and then, with alarm dawning in her eyes, she leaned forward eagerly
and put a pleading hand upon his arm:

"You won't say anything about this to mother, will you?"

Gordon hesitated, but his eyes, flashing with the intensity of his
feeling, softened as they fell upon her anxious face.

"It's hardly fair," he said doggedly, "it certainly isn't just, for
her to glorify Felix as she does when he is--what he is. In justice to
you she ought to know this."

"That's of no consequence at all beside the pain it would give her to
know the truth. You don't know mother--nobody does but me--and you
can't appreciate in the least what Felix, or, rather, her ideal of
Felix, means to her. Mother is, and always has been, a romantic sort
of woman, as you might guess"--and she smiled faintly at him--"by
the names she gave her children. Her own life has been hard and
monotonous, with little pleasure, little beauty--and she has such a
beauty-loving nature--little opportunity. And she is so shy, too, she
has so little self-confidence. So, don't you see, all the romance and
imagination that have been starved in her have been born over again
for her in Felix. Felix is handsome, magnetic--he attracts people and
makes everybody his friends, as she would have liked to do--he is a
genius, he creates beautiful things, he lives in lovely surroundings,
he is winning fame and wealth--life for him is a Grand Adventure, more
beautiful and wonderful than anything she ever dared to dream. She
knows Felix is selfish, but she can always see so many reasons why it
is impossible for him to do any particular generous thing. Oh, Mr.
Gordon, it would grieve her so to know how that accident really
happened and how he concealed the truth and--and----"

"Ah, you don't like to say it," he broke in as she hesitated and
ceased speaking. "But I know what you mean--how he profited by it. For
the money that would have been divided upon the education of both of
you if you had been well and strong was all spent upon him. And he
took it and kept silent."

Again she stared at him in surprise. "How frankly Felix must have
talked with you!" she exclaimed. "He never would have confessed all
this if he hadn't felt remorseful and repentant!"

"But he isn't!" Gordon blurted out with an irritated start. "He's come
to think it a part of his good fortune. If he had been, or, even, if
he were now--well, things might have turned out differently--that's
all I