ed her. "You should have told me, Henry; or--I should
have been able to see."

"I couldn't tell you--dear," he said the last word very distinctly, but
so low that she could scarcely hear. "I couldn't tell you now--if Ben
hadn't gone away as he has and this other fellow come. I couldn't tell
you when you wanted to keep caring so much for your Uncle Benny, and he
was trying to hurt me with you."

She bent toward him, her lips parted; but now she did not speak. She
never had really known Henry until this moment, she felt; she had
thought of him always as strong, almost brutal, fighting down fiercely,
mercilessly, his opponents and welcoming contest for the joy of
overwhelming others by his own decisive strength and power. And she
had been almost ready to marry that man for his strength and dominance
from those qualities; and now she knew that he was merciful
too--indeed, more than merciful. In the very contest where she had
thought of him as most selfish and regardless of another, she had most
completely misapprehended.

"I ought to have seen!" she rebuked herself to him. "Surely, I should
have seen that was it!" Her hand, in the reproach of her feeling,
reached toward him across the table; he caught it and held it in his
large, strong hand which, in its touch, was very tender too. She had
never allowed any such demonstration as this before; but now she let
her hand remain in his.

"How could you see?" he defended her. "He never showed to you the side
he showed to me and--in these last years, anyway--never to me the side
he showed to you. But after what has happened this week, you can
understand now; and you can see why I have to distrust the young fellow
who's come to claim Ben Covert's place."

"Claim!" Constance repeated; she drew her hand quietly away from his
now. "Why, Henry, I did not know he claimed anything; he didn't even
know when he came here--"

"He seems, like Ben Corvet," Henry said slowly, "to have the
characteristic of showing one side to you, another to me, Connie. With
you, of course, he claimed nothing; but at the office-- Your father
showed him this morning the instruments of transfer that Ben seems to
have left conveying to him all Ben had--his other properties and his
interest in Corvet, Sherrill, and Spearman. I very naturally objected
to the execution of those transfers, without considerable examination,
in view of Corvet's mental condition and of the fact that they put the
c