nk you mistaken. I don't want to say more than that. If I find Mr.
Guion of the same opinion--"

"I see. You don't consider my word sufficient."

"Your word is all right, Miss Guion," he tried to laugh. "What you lack
is authority. My dealings are with your father. I can't settle anything
with--a substitute."

She colored swiftly. "I don't presume to settle anything. I only thought
I might give you some necessary information. I hoped, too, to save you a
little trouble in sparing you the walk to Tory Hill."

He looked away from her, his eyes wandering up the reach of the river,
over which the long, thin, many-oared college craft shot like insects
across a pool.

"Why should you be so bent on seeing your father follow Jack Berrington,
when it could be avoided?"

"Why should you care? What difference does it make to you? If you'd only
explain that--"

"It explains itself. If I saw a woman leap into the river there I should
pull her out. The more she insisted on being drowned, the more I should
try to save her."

"But, you see, I'm not leaping into a river. On the contrary, I'm
getting out of one. It seems to me that you'd be only forcing me back
and making my last state worse than the first."

It took him a minute to grasp the force of this. "That would depend, of
course, on the point of view. As a matter of fact, it's something with
which I've nothing to do. It concerns you, and it concerns Mr. Guion,
but it doesn't concern me. For me the whole thing is very simple. I've
offered to lend Mr. Guion a sum of money. It's for him to take or to
leave. If he refuses it, I sha'n't be offended; and if he doesn't refuse
it--"

"You'd let him have it, just the same?"

"Of course. Why not?"

"In spite of all I've said as to what I should feel?"

"But I'm not supposed to know anything about that, you know. I repeat
that it isn't my affair. If Mr. Guion should accept my loan against your
wishes--well, that's something you'd have to fix up with him."

She was some minutes silent, her eyes ranging over the river and the
marshes, like his own.

"If you urged it on him," she said at last, "I think he'd take it."

"Then so much the better, from my point of view."

"Precisely; but then your point of view is a mystery. Not that it makes
any difference," she hastened to add. "If my father accepts your loan,
it will be for me to pay it back, in one way or another--if I ever can."

"We could talk of that," he smiled, tryin