eautiful, and would hardly
pass for pretty beside such a good-looking woman as Margaret, who
after all was not what people call an out-and-out beauty. It was odd
that the quiet lady-like teacher should have answered monosyllabically
in that tone. She felt Margaret's sidelong look of inquiry, and turned
half round after glancing at little Ida, who was very busy with her
crochet.

'I'm afraid you may have misunderstood me,' she said, smiling. 'If I
did not say any more it is because he himself does not wish people to
talk of what he does.'

'I assure you, I'm not curious,' Margaret answered, smiling too. 'I'm
sorry if I looked as if I were.'

'No--you misunderstood me, and it was a little my fault. Mr. Van Torp
is doing something very, very kind which it was impossible that I
should not know of, and he has asked me not to tell any one.'

'I see,' Margaret answered. 'Thank you for telling me. I am glad to
know that he--'

She checked herself. She detested and feared the man, for reasons of
her own, and she found it hard to believe that he could do something
'very, very kind' and yet not wish it to be known. He did not strike
her as being the kind of person who would go out of his way to hide
his light under a bushel. Yet Miss More's tone had been quiet and
earnest. Perhaps he had employed her to teach some poor deaf and dumb
child, like little Ida. Her words seemed to imply this, for she had
said that it had been impossible that she should not know; that is,
he had been forced to ask her advice or help, and her help and advice
could only be considered indispensable where her profession as a
teacher of the deaf and dumb was concerned.

Miss More was too discreet to ask the question which Margaret's
unfinished sentence suggested, but she would not let the speech pass
quite unanswered.

'He is often misjudged,' she said. 'In business he may be what many
people say he is. I don't understand business! But I have known him to
help people who needed help badly and who never guessed that he even
knew their names.'

'You must be right,' Margaret answered.

She remembered the last words of the girl who had died in the
manager's room at the theatre. There had been a secret. The secret
was that Mr. Van Torp had done the thing, whatever it was. She had
probably not known what she was saying, but it had been on her mind to
say that Mr. Van Torp had done it, the man she was to have married.
Margaret's first impression had be