"I want to be alone with you, my boy," Sively said, with ill-assumed ease. "You can trust me, you know, and—well, the truth is, my boy, I want to know what you are in trouble about." "Me? Good gracious!" "Oh, don’t begin that!" Sively said, firmly, as he struck a match and held it to the end of his cigar. "I won’t stand it. You can’t keep your feelings from me. At first, when Pomp told me about your not going out to those affairs when I was away, I thought your father had thrown you over for good and all, but it isn’t that. My uncle couldn’t do it, anyway. You are in trouble, my boy; what is it?" Langdon flushed and stared defiantly across the table into the fixed eyes of his cousin for a moment, and then he looked down. "No, my father is all right," he said. "He’s found out about the horse, but he didn’t take it so very hard. In fact, he went to Darley and bought him back for only a slight advance on what I sold him for. He is worried about me, and writes for me to come on home." "Then, as I supposed, it is _not_ your father," said Sively. There was a pause. Langdon, with bloodless fingers, nervously broke his cigar half in two. He took another and listlessly struck a match, only to let its flame expire without using it. "What’s the trouble, my boy?" pursued Sively. "I want to befriend you if I can. I’m older than you." "Well, I _am_ in trouble," Langdon said, simply. Then, in a low tone, and with frequent pauses, he told all about his acquaintance with Virginia. Once started, he left out no detail, extending his confidence till it had included a humble confession even of his humiliation by Ann Boyd and the girl’s bitter words of contempt a few days later. "Then I had to come away," Langdon finished, with a sigh that was a whispered groan. "I couldn’t stand it. I thought the change, the life and excitement down here, would make me forget, but it’s worse than ever. I’m in hell, old man—a regular hell." Sively leaned back in his chair. There was an expression of supreme disgust about his sensitive nose and mouth, and his eyes burned with indignant, spirit-fed fires. "Great God!" he exclaimed; "and it was _that_ girl—that particular one—Jane Hemingway’s daughter!" "You’ve seen her, then?" Langdon said, in awakening surprise. "Seen her? Great Heavens, of course, I’ve seen her, and, now that I know all this, her sweet, young face will never go out of my mind—never as long as life is in me." "I don’t exactly see—I don’t understand—" Langdon began, but his cousin interrupted him.