m, "I am sure I have nothing to forgive. You did not believe the
treasure belonged to us any more than to anybody else, until you knew
ME--"

"That is true," said the young man, attempting to take her hand.

"I mean," said Rosey, blushing, and showing a distracting row of little
teeth in one of her infrequent laughs, "oh, you know what I mean." She
withdrew her arm gently, and became interested in the selection of
certain wayside bay leaves as they passed along. "All the same, I
don't believe in this treasure," she said abruptly, as if to change the
subject. "I don't believe it ever was hidden inside the Pontiac."

"That can easily be ascertained now," said Renshaw.

"But it's a pity you didn't find it out while you were about it," said
Rosey. "It would have saved so much talk and trouble."

"I have told you why I didn't search the ship," responded Renshaw, with
a slight bitterness. "But it seems I could only avoid being a great
rascal by becoming a great fool."

"You never intended to be a rascal," said Rosey, earnestly, "and you
couldn't be a fool, except in heeding what a silly girl says. I only
meant if you had taken me into your confidence it would have been
better."

"Might I not say the same to you regarding your friend, the old
Frenchman?" returned Renshaw. "What if I were to confess to you that I
lately suspected him of knowing the secret, and of trying to gain your
assistance?"

Instead of indignantly repudiating the suggestion, to the young man's
great discomfiture, Rosey only knit her pretty brows, and remained for
some minutes silent. Presently she asked timidly,--

"Do you think it wrong to tell another person's secret for their own
good?"

"No," said Renshaw, promptly.

"Then I'll tell you Monsieur de Ferrieres's! But only because I
believe from what you have just said that he will turn out to have some
right to the treasure."

Then with kindling eyes, and a voice eloquent with sympathy, Rosey told
the story of her accidental discovery of de Ferrieres's miserable
existence in the loft. Clothing it with the unconscious poetry of her
fresh, young imagination, she lightly passed over his antique gallantry
and grotesque weakness, exalting only his lonely sufferings and
mysterious wrongs. Renshaw listened, lost between shame for his late
suspicions and admiration for her thoughtful delicacy, until she began
to speak of de Ferrieres's strange allusions to the foreign papers in
his por