? In a dazed
way she lifted the paper which she had allowed to fall to the ground,
and read the paragraph again. No names were given. "The directors deemed
it necessary" because of the reasons which followed. She could not doubt
its truth. She sat gazing in front of her, stunned, hopeless. Fate was
surely unkind. Neither she nor her father merited treatment like this.
Her spirit grew rebellious, almost wicked. After a time Aunt Frances
came to receive orders for dinner. "Anything you can find" was Julia's
reply, and she continued to gaze straight in front of her, A buggy
passed, and its occupant lifted his hat, but she made no sign. She did
not see the buggy, nor Glenning. He wondered that she did not return his
salutation. Then he saw a newspaper crushed in her hand, and his active
mind guessed the truth. He drove on with his heart seething at the
injustice of it all, and his inability to help.

The moments passed, and still Julia sat like a woman of stone, a look on
her fresh young face which was piteous in its tragic helplessness.
"Daddy must not know! Daddy must not know!" This one sentence coursed
through her mind with each throb of her pulse, and its constant
reiteration almost maddened her, for how could she hold the truth from
him? She saw nothing, not even the figure which presently laboured up
the drive, wiping the streaming perspiration from its face as it came.
Not till Dillard stopped in front of her, waiting to be recognized, did
she lift her eyes to him, dully. But she said nothing. She felt as one
who had suddenly come to the end of life, unexpectedly, in the heyday of
his youth and happiness.

"Good morning, Miss Julia," said Dillard, "may I sit down? I can't stay
but a moment."

She brushed her skirts aside, and the young man took the seat made
vacant by her movement. He was breathing hard, and had evidently come in
a hurry. He, too, noted the paper, and he saw where it was opened.

"It's a bloomin' shame, Miss Julia!" he blurted out, twirling his straw
hat nervously between his hands. "You've read it, I know, and I've
rushed out here at my dinner hour to tell you that it's the meanest
trick I ever knew anybody to do, and--"

"Who did it?"

Her voice sounded hollow and old.

"Who did it?" he repeated. "Devil Marston did it! He did it just to
spite you and the Major. We made the dividend, and two hundred and fifty
dollars of it belongs to you, but Marston's word is law in that bank.
Oh, it's a