“Perhaps I haven’t seen it; perhaps I am only imagining how it ought to look. But the name ‘Westwood’ is familiar enough. It is written all over the Ocoee maps.” Her smile, on any other lips, would have had more than a hint of bitterness in it. “I suppose we ought to be proud of the distinction. The printing of the home name on the maps was the only return my father ever had for what he did for Mr. Parker. But, of course, you know all about that.” “Not so much as I’d like to know. I have understood that your father was a heavy investor in the original Ocoee company, and that Parker contrived to give him the hot end of things in the reorganization.” “It is all true.” “It makes me feel as if I had been caught stealing sheep,” he volunteered. “Ethically, I suppose the Ocoee doesn’t belong to me at all, though I hope it is clear to everybody that neither I nor my father had any part in the crookedness. So far as that goes, my father never knew anything about the early history of the mine; and neither did I before I came down here. How does your father feel about it?” It did not strike him at the moment as being particularly significant that she did not answer the question categorically. “Those things are all past and gone,” she said half-absently. And then: “I wish you might meet my father; you and Mr. Carfax.” The mention of Carfax’s name was as salt to a fresh wound. “You’ve changed your mind about Poictiers, haven’t you?” he said, and he tried to make the saying of it entirely judicial. “You made fun of him at first, you know.” “Not of him, but of some of the things that he said and did,” she corrected quickly. “And that was only because I didn’t know him; because I was so stupid as not to recognize the real man under the transparent little mask of affectation that he delights in holding up between himself and all the rest of the world.” Tregarvon made a loud call upon his magnanimity, and concurred heartily. “He is the finest there is, Richardia. I--I hope he will be able to make you as happy as you deserve to be.” For the moment he was puzzled. Sheer maiden modesty might have accounted for the blush, but why should the slate-blue eyes grow suspiciously bright, as with tears? “Then he has told you?” She had turned away from him and there was a little catch in her voice. “Yes. It broke my heart, Richardia--which shows you how far I had gone on the road to depravity. Poictiers said to me once that I was playing the dog in the manger, and so I was. There was no excuse, of course; there never is an excuse for dishonor. But you were heart and soul and conscience to me, and I seemed to need you so much more than anybody else ever could. I can say all this without blame now, can’t I? You are going to marry Poictiers, and I am going to marry Elizabeth.”