"There was a paragraph in one newspaper, next morning, which gave the girl's full name, and a fancy sketch of her elopement with the famous range-rider Dick Malaby. This was just after the close of the cattlemen's war in Wyoming. Malaby had fought for one of the ruined English companies. (The big owners lost everything, as you know. The country was up in arms against them; they could not protect their own men.) Malaby's employers were friends of the Benedets, and had asked a place with them for their liegeman. He was a desperado with a dozen lives upon his head, but men like Norwood Benedet and his set would have been sure to make a pet of him. One could see how it all had come about, and what a terrible publicity such a name associated with hers would give a girl for the rest of her life. "But money can do a great deal. Society was out of town; the newspapers that society reads were silent. "It was announced a few days later that Mrs. Benedet and her daughter Helen had gone East on their way to Europe. As Mr. Benedet's health was very bad,--this was only six months before he died,--society wondered; but it has been accustomed to wondering about the Benedets. "Mrs. Benedet came home at the time of her husband's death and remained for a few months, but Helen was kept away. You know they have continually been abroad for the last seven years, and Helen has never been seen in society here. When you spoke of 'Miss Benedet' I no more thought of her than if she had not been living. Aunt Frances met them last winter at Cannes, and Mrs. Benedet said positively that they had no intention of coming back to California ever to live. Aunt Frances wondered why, with their beautiful homes empty and going to destruction. I have told you the probable reason. Whether it still exists, God knows--or what they have done with that man and his dreadful knowledge. "Helen Benedet may have changed her spiritual identity since she made that fatal journey, but she can hardly have forgotten what she did. She must know there is a man who, if he lives, holds her reputation at the mercy of his silence. Money can do a great deal, but it cannot do everything. "I am tempted to wish that we--your father and I--could share your ignorance, could trust as you do. Better a common awakening for us all, than that I should be the one necessity has chosen to apply the torture to my son. "The misery of this will make you hate my handwriting forever. But why do I babble? You do not hear me. God help you, my dear!" * * * * * These words, descriptive of her own emotions, Mrs. Thorne on re-reading scored out, and copied the last page. She did not weep. She ached from the impossibility of weeping. She stumbled away from her desk, tripping in her long robes, and stretched herself out at full length on the floor, like a girl in the first embrace of sorrow. But hearing Ito's footsteps, she rose ashamed, and took an attitude befitting her years.