t in the adage? You would and you
wouldn't?"

"My blood is not thick enough. I can't do it."

"Then why did you propose it? Was it your suggestion or mine? I thought
to spare the girl her shame. Here her trouble must fall on her in
battalions, poor little being. Send her away, and you decimate them."

"It is unnecessary. You know I am superior to prejudice." Hugh Ritson
dropped his voice and said, as if speaking into his breast: "If the
worst comes to the worst, I can marry her."

Mr. Bonnithorne laughed lightly.

"Ho! ho! And in what turgid melodrama does not just such an episode
occur?"

Hugh Ritson drew up sharply.

"Why not? Is she poor? Then what am I? Uneducated? What is education
likely to do for me? A simple creature, all heart and no head? God be
praised for that!"

At this moment a girl's laugh came rippling through the air. It was one
of those joyous peals that make the heart's own music. Hugh Ritson's
pale face flushed a little, and he drew his breath hard.

Mr. Bonnithorne nodded his head in the direction of the voice, and said
softly: "So our friend Greta is here to-day?"

"Yes," said Hugh Ritson very quietly.

Then the friends walked some distance in silence.

"It is scarcely worthy of you to talk in this brain-sick fashion," said
Mr. Bonnithorne. There was a dull irritation in the tone. "You place
yourself in the wrong point of view. You do not love the little being."

Hugh Ritson's forehead contracted, and he said: "If I have wrecked my
life by one folly, one act of astounding unwisdom, what matter? There
was but little to wreck. I am a disappointed man."

"Pardon me, you are a very young one," said Mr. Bonnithorne.

"What am I in my father's house? He gives no hint of helping me to an
independence in life."

"There are the lands. Your father must be a rich man."

"And I am a second son."

"Indeed?"

Hugh Ritson glanced up quickly.

"What do you mean?"

"You say you are a second son."

"And what then?"

"Would it be so fearful a thing if you were not a second son?"

"In the name of truth, be plain. My brother Paul is living."

Mr. Bonnithorne nodded his head twice or thrice, and said calmly: "You
know that your brother hopes to marry Greta?"

"I have heard it."

Again the flush came to Hugh Ritson's cheeks. His low voice had a
tremor.

"Did I ever tell you of her father's strange legacy?"

"Never."

"My poor friend Robert Lowther left a legacy to a son of his own