“Pardon me, Dennie, I would not hurt your feelings.” His voice was very gentle, and Dennie looked up gratefully. “On that night your father made me promise--made me hold up my hand and swear--I'm easily forced, you will think--to look after you if he were taken away. I did it to pacify him, not to ever embarrass you. He also told me enough about young Burleigh to make me wish, in the office of protector, to warn you.” “Was my father quite himself then?” Dennie asked. “Not quite,” Burgess replied. “Listen to him some day when he is. He is another man then. But,” she added, “I know you mean well.” In spite of her courage her eyes were full of tears, and for the first time in his sheltered pleasant life the real spirit of sympathy woke in the soul of Vincent Burgess. “You are a brave, good girl, Dennie. If I can ever serve you in any way, it will be a privilege to me to do it.” Ten minutes after they had left the library Trench, who had been stationary in the north alcove, slowly came to life. He had been posing as a statue, Winged Victory with a head on, he declared afterward to Vic Burleigh, to whom he told the whole story. “Let me sing my swan song,” he declared. “Then me for Lagonda's whirlpool. I'm not fit to live in a decent community, a blithering idiot and rascally villain, who lies in wait to hear and see like a fool. I thought Dennie knew I was there and would be in to dust me out in a minute. And when it was too late I turned to a pillar of salt and waited. But I believe I'll change my mind, after all. I'll live; and if Professor Burgess, A.B. of Cambridge-by-the-bean-patch, dares to make love to Dennie Saxon--on the side--he'll go head foremost into the whirlpool to feed Lagonda's rapacious spirit. I've said it.” CHAPTER VIII. LOSS, OR GAIN? _We cannot make bargains for blisses, Nor catch them like fishes in nets, And sometimes the thing our life misses Helps more than the thing which it gets_. --CARY ELINOR WREAM spent the holidays in the East and was two weeks late in entering school again. Then her Uncle Lloyd tightened the rules, exacting full measure for lost time, until she bewailed to her girl friends that she had no opportunity even to make fudge or wash her hair. “Were you sorry to come back, then, Norrie?” her uncle asked one evening when they were alone in their library, and Elinor was lamenting her hard lot. “No, I want to be with you, Uncle Lloyd.” She was sitting on the arm of his morris chair, softly stroking his heavy hair away from his forehead. “Looks like it, the way you hurried back,” Dr. Fenneben said, smiling. “But Uncle Joshua is n't well, although, to be honest, he didn't seem a bit anxious to have me stay. He's so wrapped up in Sanscrit he has no time to live in the present. Why didn't he ever marry?” “You have just said why,” her uncle answered her. “Why did n't you ever marry. Were you ever in love?”