“Poor thing!” sighed Olive, “I don't know what she would do if she heard that you were going away. To hear her talk, you would think she had been counting the days and hours till you got back. It's ridiculous, the way she goes on with mother; asking everything about you, as if she expected to make Bartley Hubbard over again on your pattern. I should hate to have anybody think me such a saint as she does you. But there isn't much danger, thank goodness! I could laugh, sometimes, at the way she questions us all about you, and is so delighted when she finds that you and that wretch have anything in common. But it's all too miserably sad. She certainly _is_ the most single-hearted creature alive,” continued Olive, reflectively. “Sometimes she _scares_ me with her innocence. I don't believe that even her jealousy ever suggested a wicked idea to her: she's furious because she feels the injustice of giving so much more than he does. She hasn't really a thought for anybody else: I do believe that if she were free to choose from now till doomsday she would always choose Bartley Hubbard, bad as she knows him to be. And if she were a widow, and anybody else proposed to her, she would be utterly shocked and astonished.” “Very likely,” said Halleck, absently. “I feel very unhappy about her,” Olive resumed. “I know that she's anxious and troubled all the time. _Can't_ you do something, Ben? Have a talk with that disgusting thing, and see if you can't put him straight again, somehow?” “No!” exclaimed Halleck, bursting violently from his abstraction. “I shall have nothing to do with them! Let him go his own way and the sooner he goes to the--I won't interfere,--I can't, I mustn't! I wonder at you, Olive!” He pushed away from the table, and went limping about the room, searching here and there for his hat and stick, which were on the desk where he had put them, in plain view. As he laid hand on them at last, he met his sister's astonished eyes. “If I interfered, I should not interfere because I cared for _him_ at all!” he cried. “Of course not,” said Olive. “But I don't see anything to make you _wonder_ at me about that.” “It would be because I cared for her--” “Certainly! You didn't suppose I expected you to interfere from any other motive?” He stood looking at her in stupefaction, with his hand on his hat and stick, like a man who doubts whether he has heard aright. Presently a shiver passed over him, another light came into his eyes, and he said quietly, “I'm going out to see Atherton.” “To-night?” said his sister, accepting provisionally, as women do, the apparent change of subject. “Don't go to-night, Ben! You're too tired.” “I'm not tired. I intended to see him to-night, at any rate. I want to talk over this South American scheme with him.” He put on his hat, and moved quickly toward the door. “Ask him about the Hubbards,” said Olive. “Perhaps he can tell you something.” “I don't want to know anything. I shall ask him nothing.”