'Then you do not know how things are with them, of course. I do not see how you have let them drop out of knowledge so. They were not exactly people to lose sight of.' 'Why not, when they went out of sight?' 'You do not even know, sir, whether Colonel Gainsborough is still living?' 'How should I? But he was as likely to live as any other man.' 'He did not think so.' 'For which very reason he would probably live longer than many other men. There is nothing like a hypochondriack for tough holding out.' 'Well, I must search New York for them this time, until I find them.' 'What possible occasion, Pitt?' said his mother, with a tone of uneasiness which Betty noted. 'Duty, mamma, and also pleasure. But duty is imperative.' 'I do not see the duty. You tried to look them up the last time you were here, and failed.' 'I shall not fail this time.' 'If it depended on your will,' remarked his father coolly. 'But I think the probability is that they have gone back to England, and are consequently no longer in New York.' 'What are the grounds of that probability?' 'When last I heard from the colonel, he was proposing the question of reconciliation with his family. And as I have heard no more from him since then, I think the likeliest thing is that he has made up his quarrel and gone home.' 'I can easily determine that question by looking over the shipping lists.' 'Perhaps not,' said Mr. Dallas, rubbing his chin. 'If he has gone, I think it will have been under another name. The one he bore here was, I suspect, assumed.' 'What for?' demanded Pitt somewhat sharply. 'Reasons of family pride, no doubt. That is enough to make men do foolisher things.' 'It would be difficult to find a foolisher thing to do,' replied his son. But then the conversation turned. It had given Miss Betty something to think of. She drew her own conclusions without asking anybody. And in some indefinite, inscrutable way it stimulated and confirmed her desire for the game Mrs. Dallas had begged her to play. Human hearts are certainly strange things. What were the Gainsboroughs to Miss Betty Frere? Nothing in the world, half an hour before; now? Now there was a vague suspicion of an enemy somewhere; a scent of rivalry in the air; an immediate rising of partisanship. Were these the people of whom Mrs. Dallas was afraid? against whom she craved help? She should have help. Was it not even a meritorious thing, to withdraw a young man from untoward influences, and keep him in the path marked out by his mother?