"In my day, sir, no one who knew the circumstances," returned the colonel, quickly. "But we are living in a blessed era of Christian retribution and civilized propriety, and I believe there are a lot of men and women about who have no other way of showing their own virtue than by showing up another's vice. We're in a reaction of reform. It's the old drunkards who are always more clamorous for total abstinence than the moderately temperate. I tell you, Hathaway, there couldn't be an unluckier moment for our secret coming out." "But she will be of age soon." "In two months." "And sure to marry." "Marry!" repeated Pendleton, with grim irony. "Would YOU marry her?" "That's another question," said the young man, promptly, "and one of individual taste; but it does not affect my general belief that she could easily find a husband as good and better." "Suppose she found one BEFORE the secret is out. Ought he be told?" "Certainly." "And that would imply telling HER?" "Yes," said Paul, but not so promptly. "And you consider THAT fulfilling the promise of the Trust--the pledges exchanged with that woman?" continued Pendleton, with glittering eyes and a return to his own dominant tone. "My dear colonel," said Paul, somewhat less positively, but still smiling, "you have made a romantic, almost impossible compact with Mrs. Howard that, you yourself are now obliged to admit, circumstances may prevent your carrying out substantially. You forget, also, that you have just told me that you have already broken your pledge--under circumstances, it is true, that do you honor--and that now your desperate attempts to retrieve it have failed. Now, I really see nothing wrong in your telling to a presumptive well-wisher of the girl what you have told to her enemy." There was a dead silence. The prostrate man uttered a slight groan, as if in pain, and drew up his leg to change his position. After a pause, he said, in a restrained voice, "I differ from you, Mr. Hathaway; but enough of this for the present. I have something else to say. It will be necessary for one of us to go at once to Santa Clara and see Miss Yerba Buena." "Good heavens!" said Paul, quickly. "Do you call her THAT?" "Certainly, sir. You gave her the name. Have you forgotten?" "I only suggested it," returned Paul, hopelessly; "but no matter--go on." "I cannot go there, as you see," continued Pendleton, with a weary gesture towards his crippled ankle; "and I should particularly like you to see her before we make the joint disposition of her affairs with the Mayor, two months hence. I have some papers you can show her, and I have already written a letter introducing you to the Lady Superior at the convent, and to her. You have never seen her?" "No," said Paul. "But of course you have?" "Not for three years."