earched
him with her glance. Without knowing why, yet vaguely fearing that
he did, he became still more embarrassed, and in the very egotism of
awkwardness, stammered without a further salutation: "A disgraceful
thing has happened last night, and I'm up early to find the perpetrator.
My desk was broken into, and"--

"I know it," she interrupted, with a half-impatient, half uneasy putting
away of the subject with her little hand--"there--don't go all over it
again. Paw and Maw have been at me about it all night--ever since those
Harrisons in their anxiousness to make up their quarrel, rushed over
with the news. I'm tired of it!"

For an instant he was staggered. How much had she learned! With the
same awkward indirectness, he said vaguely, "But it might have been YOUR
letters, you know?"

"But it wasn't," she said, simply. "It OUGHT to have been. I wish it
had"--She stopped, and again regarded him with a strange expression.
"Well," she said slowly, "what are you going to do?"

"To find out the scoundrel who has done this," he said firmly, "and
punish him as he deserves."

The almost imperceptible shrug that had raised her shoulders gave way as
she regarded him with a look of wearied compassion.

"No," she said, gravely, "you cannot. They're too many for you. You must
go away, at once."

"Never," he said indignantly. "Even if it were not a cowardice. It would
be more--a confession!"

"Not more than they already know," she said wearily. "But, I tell you,
you MUST go. I have sneaked out of the house and run here all the way to
warn you. If you--you care for me, Jack--you will go."

"I should be a traitor to you if I did," he said quickly. "I shall
stay."

"But if--if--Jack--if"--she drew nearer him with a new-found
timidity, and then suddenly placed her two hands upon his shoulders:
"If--if--Jack--I were to go with you?"

The old rapt, eager look of possession had come back to her face now;
her lips were softly parted. Yet even then she seemed to be waiting some
reply more potent than that syllabled on the lips of the man before her.

Howbeit that was the only response. "Darling," he said kissing her, "but
wouldn't that justify them"--

"Stop," she said suddenly. Then putting her hand over his mouth, she
continued with the same half-weary expression: "Don't let us go over all
that again either. It is SO tiresome. Listen, dear. You'll do one or
two little things for me--won't you, dandy boy? Don't linger lon