and
the severity of the lawyer's cynicism relaxed. Paul handed Mr.
Bonnithorne, without comment, the deed drawn up in London. Mr.
Bonnithorne glanced at it, pocketed it, and smiled. His sense of Paul's
importance as a dangerous man sunk to nothing at that moment. They
parted without more words.

Parson Christian got home toward evening, dead beaten with fatigue. He
found the lawyer waiting for him. The marriage had been big in his eyes
all day, and other affairs very little.

"So you shall give her away, Mr. Bonnithorne," he said, without
superfluous preface of any kind.

"I--I?" said Mr. Bonnithorne, with elevated brows.

"Who has more right?" said the parson.

"Well, you know, you--you--"

"Me! Nay, I must marry them. It is you for the other duty."

"You see, Mr. Christian, if you think of it, I am--I am--"

"You are her father's old friend. There, let us look on it as settled."

Mr. Bonnithorne looked on it as awkward. "Well, to say the truth, Mr.
Christian, I'd--I'd rather not."

The old parson lifted two astonished eyes, and gazed at Mr. Bonnithorne
over the rims of his spectacles. The lawyer's uneasiness increased. Then
Parson Christian remembered that only a little while ago Mr. Bonnithorne
had offered reasons why Paul should not marry Greta. They were rather
too secular, those same reasons, but no doubt they had appealed honestly
to his mind as a friend of Greta's family.

"Paul and Greta are going away," said the parson.

"So I judged."

"They go to Victoria to farm there," continued the parson.

"On Greta's money," added the lawyer.

Parson Christian looked again over the rims of his spectacles. Then for
once his frank and mellow face annexed a reflection of the curl on the
lawyer's lip. "Do you know," he said, "it never once came into my
simple old pate to ask which would find the dross and which the honest
labor?"

Mr. Bonnithorne winced. The simple old pate could, on occasion, be more
than a match for his own wise head.

"Seeing that I shall marry her, I think it will be expected that you
should give her to her husband; but if you have an objection--"

"An objection?" Mr. Bonnithorne interrupted. "I don't know that my
feeling is so serious as that."

"Then let us leave it there, and you'll decide in the morning," said
Parson Christian.

So they left it there, and Mr. Bonnithorne, the dear friend of the
family, made haste to the telegraph office and sent this telegram to
Hugh Rits