John Milton drew back, and his hand dropped loosely from his wife's. The color left his fresh young face; the light quivered for a moment and then became fixed and set in his eyes. For that moment he looked ten years her senior. “I was wrong ever to tell even you that, Loo,” he said in a low voice. “You are wrong to ever remind me of it. Forget it from this moment, as you value our love and want it to live and be remembered. And forget, Loo, as I do,--and ever shall,--that you ever suggested to me to use my secret in the way you did just now.” But here Mrs. Harcourt burst into tears, more touched by the alteration in her husband's manner, I fear, than by any contrition for wrongdoing. Of course if he wished to withdraw his confidences from her, just as he had almost confessed he wished to withdraw his NAME, she couldn't help it, but it was hard that when she sat there all day long trying to think what was best for them, she should be blamed! At which the quiet and forgiving John Milton smiled remorsefully and tried to comfort her. Nevertheless an occasional odd, indefinable chill seemed to creep across the feverish enthusiasm with which he was celebrating this day of fortune. And yet he neither knew nor suspected until long after that his foolish wife had that night half betrayed his secret to the stranger! The next day he presented a note of introduction from Mr. Fletcher to the business manager of the “Clarion,” and the following morning was duly installed in office. He did not see his benefactor again; that single visit was left in the mystery and isolation of an angelic episode. It later appeared that other and larger interests in the San Jose valley claimed his patron's residence and attendance; only the capital and general purpose of the paper--to develop into a party organ in the interest of his possible senatorial aspirations in due season--was furnished by him. Grateful as John Milton felt towards him, he was relieved; it seemed probable that Mr. Fletcher HAD selected him on his individual merits, and not as the son of a millionaire.